Vic-NSW Injecting Rooms – A Review

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"Injecting rooms are to health and recovery like Vaping is to the Quit campaign – both counter intuitive and counter-productive."

• Overdoses – What’s Really Happening?
• Saving Lives – What Does the Evidence Say?

A One-Pillar Stool

Canada’s Drug Strategy is based on four pillars: prevention, enforcement, treatment and harm reduction. SCS sites speak to the issue of harm reduction. However, the way this multipronged approach is currently implemented in Alberta, harm reduction has taken precedence over the other three pillars. Often the Review Committee heard that treatment referrals from SCS sites were little more than nominal suggestions and rarely in the consultation process did anyone speak to the issue of prevention. We were provided with exceedingly limited documentation of successful referrals of SCS clients into the appropriate level of addiction recovery treatment.

Another concern for the Committee related to law enforcement in and around the sites. Contrary to what many believe, trafficking and possession of illicit drugs remains illegal. Substances such as heroin, non-prescribed fentanyl and methamphetamine are still restricted under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. The exemption under Section 56.1 is, “For the purpose of allowing certain activities to take place at a supervised consumption site…” This exemption is not a blanket one that suspends the act in some broadly undefined vicinity of the site; it is applied explicitly at the site. The exemption does not authorize drug dealing, or the possession of substantial quantities of illegal substances within an arbitrary distance from the site. (excerpt pp 34,35)

See also Lethbridge supervised consumption site loses government funding after audit

The above sounds familiar – all too familiar. When harm reduction vehicles serve the pro-drug lobby and not the substance use trapped psyche, it is utterly inappropriate.

It is very concerning when the health and well-being of those caught in the tyranny of addiction are not being led into drug use exiting processes, but merely becoming a hapless pawn in a disturbing and manipulative exercise of drug use ‘normalization.’

Instead of an efficacy for recovery review, we are going to double down on another drug consumption site, only perpetuating the growing personal and community harms.

REPORTER @jackpayn  MAY 10, 2021

Dozens of people have been arrested for drug offences as part of police crackdown near Melbourne’s controversial safe injecting room.

Victoria Police charged 16 people with drug trafficking and 14 people with drug possession in Richmond, Collingwood and Fitzroy during April.

The arrests come after a turbulent past month for the North Richmond medically supervised injecting room that saw a man caught inside the Richmond West Primary School grounds allegedly wielding a knife, while another man was found dead in a park near the school.

Disgruntled parents, who have encountered drug users unconscious, dealing, defecating and urinating next to the primary school, held a crisis meeting in March to demand the injecting room be moved.

While police made no mention of the injecting room in announcing the arrests, Acting Superintendent Kelvin Gale said they were “unwavering” in their commitment to minimising the devastating impacts of drugs on the community.

A man is arrested inside the grounds of Richmond West Primary School after allegedly being found with a knife. Picture: Jason Edwards

“Our number one priority is community safety and we will continue to work tirelessly to ensure everyone in Yarra is safe,” he said.

“The harm caused by illicit drugs ripples throughout our entire community – with drug-fuelled violence, burglaries and thefts committed to support an addiction, drug-related road trauma, family violence and sexual assaults.”

Operation Enforcement, a new dedicated local drug enforcement strategy, involves police with local businesses and stakeholders to analyse intelligence every day and provide a targeted response to prevent and illicit drug activity across Richmond, Collingwood and Fitzroy.

Five men and a woman were charged with drug trafficking and dealing with the proceeds of crime after police allegedly seized cannabis, LSD, magic mushrooms (Psilocybin), cash, six tasers and OC spray at a house in Clifton Hill on April 6. Among the other 24 people arrested was a 45-year-old man allegedly found with heroin, about $1000 worth of casino chips, thousands of dollars in cash and multiple mobile phones in his car in Richmond.

Superintendent Gale said police would continue to have a proactive, ongoing focus targeting street level drug dealing and possession in Yarra local government area.

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Drug Free Australia:  A formal complaint has been sent to the United Nations International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) citing overwhelming evidence that Australia’s two injecting rooms – one each in Sydney and Melbourne – are both tacitly aiding and abetting the local drug trade, significantly enriching drug dealers.

The Sydney injecting room hosts overdose rates which are up to 63 times higher than the overdose histories of its own clients before they register to use the facility, while the Melbourne injecting room has overdose rates a staggering 102 times higher.  Even with 23% of Melbourne’s clients being recently released from prison, a situation which somewhat elevates the chance of an overdose, overdose rates are still 70 times higher than normal.

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