TRANSCRIPT
Research by the Burnet Institute has found growing support for safe injecting rooms over the past 20 years.
Nationwide, Burnet has support at 54 per cent.
Senior researcher Dr Amanda Roxburgh says media coverage tends to convey the opposite.
"Often the media represent that the public aren't in support of these services but I think our findings actually show that this isn't the case. That there is support and quite high support, even when you look at each jurisdiction, it's over 50 per cent in every jurisdiction. So, clearly there's more support that some of the media might present."
In April, the Victorian government scrapped plans to open a second safe injecting room in Melbourne's central business district to complement an existing facility in North Richmond.
A former police commissioner recommended the trial of four to six drug injecting booths but every time a potential location was suggested, campaigns were mounted to oppose the plans.
Eventually, the Premier Jacinta Allan scrapped the idea altogether.
The head of the King Cross injecting room, Doctor Marianne Jauncey, says using existing facilities for supervised injecting could be the way forward.
“The law as it stands says please as a health worker go and give clean needles. Please as a health worker try to get someone linked into treatment. Please as a health worker do this and be funded but then suddenly we stop and throw up our hands at the idea of allowing someone to use the equipment that we have just given them. So, in New South Wales, where I'm physically sitting right now, is the only space in the state where someone can come in and not just be given the clean injecting equipment but be able to use it."
Dr Jauncey says in the years before the Kings Cross facility opened, the local area was awash with heroin.
She says there are still high rates of drug related harm and high and increasing overdose rates but not in a concentrated area.
"Our policy response needs to keep up with the change. So that's why what I would suggest is not that we need another large, purpose-built facility like we have here in Kings Cross but we need to respond to the changes in drug use and the drug patterns and instead have small services and a network of them operating utilising the existing infrastructure because we have buildings, we have services that specifically deal with people who inject drugs, and we're providing clean injecting equipment why on earth wouldn't we let some of those services have a space that people could use drugs on site. It makes sense for the person and it makes sense for the local community."
Doctor Amanda Roxburgh says Burnet's findings will be presented at the upcoming New South Wales drug summit.
"Public opinion is really a key factor in influencing drug policy reform and we have an opportunity, with the upcoming New South Wales drug summit to present these data and the public support in this country for these services, along with the evidence base for consideration around where other services might be located across the country, given we've got increasing overdoses and harms."
