There are calls for Canberra to decide whether it will establish a medically supervised injecting centre. Photo: Emma Barber/Uniting.
As we wait on the ACT Government to consider various reports into establishing supervised injecting services in the Territory, we wanted to offer our input as the operator of the first such service in the southern hemisphere.
In 2001, Uniting’s Medically Supervised Injecting Centre (MSIC) was opened in King’s Cross – the first of its kind in the English-speaking world. We have learnt a great deal over the past quarter of a century operating this life-saving and life-changing health service.
The numbers don’t lie.
Over 24 plus years, 1.43 million injections on site, nearly 12,000 overdoses with not a single death, more than 25,000 referrals into various forms of treatment care and support. Ours is a welcoming, useful, pragmatic service that saves and changes lives for the better.
There are more than 150 supervised injecting facilities like our MSIC already operating around the world – in Switzerland, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway, Luxembourg, Denmark, Canada, Portugal, Iceland and France, among others.
The need in the ACT for such a service, or number of smaller co-located services, has never been greater.
A recent report from the Pennington Institute revealed that nearly four times as many people died from unintentional drug-induced deaths in 2021 than died in road accidents in the ACT.
In the ACT we already give people clean needles and then just send them away, out of sight. Where do we think they go?
The health services that provided the injecting equipment are prevented from being able to supervise clients injecting and so can’t intervene to prevent an overdose death or intervene to ensure safe disposal of all needle equipment.
They are required to send people offsite, despite clear medical evidence that a person injecting alone is an independent risk factor for accidental overdose death.
The duty of care they have appears to end the moment a client leaves the service because to be present while they inject is currently illegal in the ACT.
Indeed, in NSW the provision of these life-saving support services can only exist at one address – 66 Darlinghurst Road, Kings Cross – under the current legislation.
We are hopeful that this will change when the NSW Government responds to the NSW Drug Summit Report. It was a clear recommendation of the report to amend this outdated clause in the legislation.
What if trained staff at existing needle syringe programs (NSPs) were able to continue to engage with their clients and give them the opportunity to inject their drugs in a safe and non-judgemental environment and under their supervision?
These needle syringe programs are already providing frontline support to a considerable number of people who inject drugs. They are coming through these NSPs doors and being handed clean injecting equipment.
Perversely, our current system says: “I’m not allowed to help and support you to be safe”.
This model of co-located, small supervised injecting services in the right places would benefit the surrounding community, as well as the individual. These services can and will save many lives in the ACT – all people we love. Someone’s brother, sister, mother, father, cousin, friend or partner.
Location matters, as we have seen clearly in other jurisdictions. Supervised injecting services need to be where public injecting drug use is already taking place and it needs to be accessible, discrete and feel safe for every client.
In Kings Cross, the local community, businesses, the Chamber of Commerce, Police and NSW Ambulance staff have all seen first-hand the positive impact on the area from the establishment of a MSIC over the past quarter of a century.
The most effective way to support people whose lives are affected by drug use or dependency is to invest in an evidence-based, whole of government response that appropriately resources harm reduction and treatment service and ensures we are creating an equitable service landscape across the ACT.
One simple, sensible, compassionate, and proven harm reduction measure is to get on with establishing appropriate safe injecting services in Canberra.
The government needs to invest in simple, evidence-based reform – recognising the reality that many people do take drugs, some inject them. Reform that helps people and supports communities.
Lives depend on it.
Uniting runs the Medically Supervised Injecting Centre and has spearheaded the Fair Treatment campaign for fairer drug laws for more than six years. Alice Salomon is the advocacy head for Uniting NSW.ACT.
