Richmond safe injecting room

[stui magpie]

Build it and they will come.

Variously a bible quote or a misquote from the movie Field of Dreams.

I don't know what the logic was in the location of the Richmond safe injecting room, but I would have thought being close to a primary school and in a residential area wasn't a great start. Whether the logic was Richmond had a high density of drug users or whether it was central enough to attract them from nearby, dunno.

It has no doubt achieved one of it's set purposes, it has saved lives. Quite a lot of them. Hundreds of people have overdosed there and been revived who would have died on the street, so on that front, tick.

However, there are other problems increasingly for residents, local traders and people just passing through with increasing volumes of drug impacted people.

In my mind, this was poorly thought out.

You put an injecting room in Richmond, at first you'll only attract locals. No junkie is going to travel any distance to shoot up if they already have gear and a syringe.

What happens next is back to the "build it and they will come"

The safe injecting room acts like a junkie magnet for the area. So more dealers move in. Where there's a concentration of demand is a good place to supply.

With increased supply through more dealers, more junkies are suddenly willing to travel to where they know where they can get a hit and as a bonus have a safe place to shoot up. Only thing is, not all of them are interested in a safe place, just getting high, so they shoot up all round the place and discard syringes carelessly.

So the down side to saving lives, is residents, traders and shoppers are coping with an increased number of drugfucked individuals causing problems.

One article I read has fiona patton who was behind the idea, blaming Police for backing out of the area and the injecting room hours of operation. But people are shooting up in laneways and in peoples front yards while the centre is open.

So, we have a situation that is apparently getting out of hand and locals, while generally supportive of the room, are getting pissed off with the collateral damage.

What's the solution?

Close it?

Move it?

Open more to spread the joy around?

A permanent Police presence to deal with the dealers and junkies?

"Not in my suburb" is a well known, used and abused notion, but the people who live and work there didn't sign up for this shit and shouldn't have to put up with it. Should anyone have to go out to their front yard wearing gloves to clean up used syringes before it's safe to take their kids to school because a government decided to put a junkie magnet nearby?

[Jezza]

I drive through North Richmond frequently. Victoria and Lennox St are particularly bad hot spots where junkies gravitate to. The area has been deteriorating for a while and only getting worse over the years.

This problem existed long before the injecting room was set up, but if anything it's only got worse and I feel sympathetic to residents and local traders who didn't sign up for this and have been adversely impacted by this policy to set up an injecting room in the area.

Don't know what the solution is, but the status quo isn't working and something needs to change soon.

[David]

This is so backward. It’s saving lives and, yes, of course there should be more of them. The status quo that couldn’t go on was the one that existed before the injecting room opened. This is a huge step forward from that, and all the peripheral problems – which sound pretty hypothetical/anecdotal; are you sure this isn’t a beat-up? – can surely be managed.

I find it very hard to believe that this is actually increasing drug use, unsafe needle disposal or the numbers of users; and if all that is merely starting to concentrate in one area then maybe that’s a sign that the rest of the city must be a pretty shit place to be if you’re, say, a homeless addict. What you’re suggesting is like arguing in favour of closing down an underresourced hospital because sick people keep hanging around in the vicinity.

[K]

[stui magpie]

[David]

It's just that this is the first I've heard of any negative outcomes related to the injecting room, and I'm not sure where these concerns are coming from.

Here's the first article I found, from a couple of weeks ago:

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/police-say-richmond-crime-has-risen-since-safe-injecting-room-opened-20190522-p51pxb.html

[stui magpie]

[think positive]