{"id":4141,"date":"2024-08-28T10:35:09","date_gmt":"2024-08-28T00:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/western-suburbs-injecting-room-will-fail-like-the-other\/"},"modified":"2024-08-28T10:35:09","modified_gmt":"2024-08-28T00:35:09","slug":"western-suburbs-injecting-room-will-fail-like-the-other","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/western-suburbs-injecting-room-will-fail-like-the-other\/","title":{"rendered":"Western suburbs injecting room will fail like the other"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"brief\"Calls for an additional<\/a> injecting room in the Western Suburbs of Sydney have led Drug Free Australia to once again highlight the failure of the Kings Cross injecting room, which hosts overdose rates 63 times<\/a> higher than clients\u2019 own overdose histories before entering the room.<\/p>\n

When new clients enter the Kings Cross injecting room for the first time, they give their details on an official registration<\/a> form, which asks, among other things, how many times they have ever overdosed and how long they have used illicit drugs.<\/p>\n

By taking this information, readily available in a public evaluation of the injecting room, Drug Free Australia has been able to show that overdose rates in the facility, in its first decade of operation, were 63 times<\/a> higher than clients\u2019 own overdose rates before entering the facility.<\/p>\n

Such extraordinary numbers of overdose inevitably means that clients are experimenting by using more illicit drugs than usual in the facility, which must inevitably be purchased from drug dealers, lining their pockets.  The injecting room is thereby a government-funded accessory to NSW\u2019s illicit drug trade and any new Western Suburbs facility would be an additional government accessory.<\/p>\n

A 2007 study<\/a> on the Kings Cross injecting room – claiming that it reduced ambulance callouts for overdose by 80% – has been shown to be in error.  This falsely<\/a> publicised study measured the effect of the heroin drought on ambulance callouts due to the Australian heroin drought, which intervened just months before the Kings Cross facility opened.  The rest of NSW had callout reductions by day of 61% against reductions in Kings Cross of 80% when the injecting room was open, evidencing a 19% better result for Kings Cross.  What the study<\/a> failed to highlight from their own data was that Kings Cross, at night when the injecting room was closed, had 29% greater reductions than the rest of NSW, indicating that sniffer dog<\/a> policing, which is used moreso at night than daytime, was responsible for the overdose reductions in the area.  This policing had the effect of sharply increasing ambulance callouts in neighbouring Darlinghurst, which was not policed in the same manner.<\/p>\n

Claims also that the injecting room saves lives are also falsified by the injecting room\u2019s own evaluations in 2003<\/a> and 2007<\/a>, which showed no reductions whatsoever for overdose presentations in nearby hospitals.  It is also well-established that in Australia there is one fatal overdose for every 110,000 opiate injections on the street, and the Kings Cross facility only averages 51,000<\/a> yearly – half that number in a year, demonstrating that the multiple millions spent each year are wasted on a facility that can only legitimately claim to save one life statistically every two years. <\/p>\n

Harm reduction measures such as these add to drug death tolls in Australia, which typically triple whenever drug prevention is deprioritised.  Opiate deaths under harm minimisation tripled between 1985, when the approach was federally adopted, to 6.75 deaths<\/a> per100,000 by 1999, plummeting to 2.2\/100,000<\/a> by 2006 under the drug prevention strategies of the 1998 Federal Tough on Drugs policy, before shooting up to 5.75\/100,000<\/a> by 2017 because harm reduction priorities were made ascendent again.  Injecting rooms, a key plank of Harm Minimisation, are an iconic part of this failed approach \u2013 prolonging opiate users\u2019 opiate injecting careers and ongoing exposure to fatal overdose opportunity.<\/p>\n

Gary Christian 
Drug Free Australia – 0422 163 141<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

This communication is sent on the understanding that it is a constitutional right to petition political representatives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Calls for an additional injecting room in the Western Suburbs of Sydney have led Drug Free Australia to once again highlight the failure of the Kings Cross injecting room, which hosts overdose rates 63 times higher than clients\u2019 own overdose histories before entering the room. When new clients enter the Kings Cross injecting room for the first time, they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4140,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-injecting-room"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}