Praise for injecting centre decision

Health organisations have praised the NSW Government’s decision to make Kings Cross’ medically supervised injecting centre (MSIC) permanent after a 10-year trial.

Australia’s peak body on HIV, the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations, welcomed the move.

“This decision by the NSW Government will save lives and is simply the logical, evidence-based outcome from the mountain of medical evidence collected over nearly a decade,” AFAO executive director Don Baxter said.

“The MSIC has significant support from NSW Police, frontline health professionals and representative organisations such as our own. As a facility for harm minimisation and to prevent the transmission of HIV, the MSIC has been an outstanding success.”

Baxter said he hoped the decision would prompt debate on a more rational approach to drugs in Australia.

“We encourage other Australian cities to assess the benefits of initiatives like this,” he said.

“The so-called War on Drugs approach has clearly failed and it is time we moved to treating drug use as primarily a health issue rather than primarily a criminal issue.

“Portugal did this back in 2002 and since then has seen a 400 percent increase in drug users joining treatment programs, a 17 percent reduction in HIV infections — and drug use has not increased. The Portuguese experience now provides hard evidence as the basis for rational drug policy and we look forward to a calm and evidence-informed discussion, and to saving many more Australian lives.”

Portugal has decriminalised all drugs for nearly a decade. Selling drugs remains a crime but, instead of prosecuting users, police direct users to health services.

ACON president Mark Orr said the MSIC’s effectivness had been clearly demonstrated by decreasing drug deaths, preventing the spread of blood-borne diseases and reducing public injecting — all while providing users with a gateway to treatment.

“The various evaluation reports have shown significant improvements in health outcomes for clients with the service supervising over 600,000 injecting events and managing over 3500 overdoses without a single fatality,” Orr said.

“In addition, the centre has an important role in assisting clients from marginalised and vulnerable backgrounds such as sex workers, Aboriginal people and people who have been recently released from prison.

“Getting information to these clients about blood-borne viruses such as HIV is essential if NSW is to maintain the current low level of HIV transmission among injecting drug users and reduce our state’s overall rate of HIV transmission.”

The decision has also been praised by groups representing injecting drug users.

NSW Users and AIDS Association president Chris Huber said it was a relief for injecting drug users to know the centre would be there for them every day.

“The centre has been taken into the hearts of some of the most vulnerable and marginalised people in our society,” Huber said.

Australian Injecting and Illicit Drug Users League executive officer Annie Madden said the decision showed that the NSW Government valued the lives of everyone who lived in the state.

“People who inject are human beings who have the right to access life-saving services. The [centre] works and today we have a mandate to ensure that it continues to do what it does best — save lives.”

The supervised injecting centre, established on the recommendation of the Wood Royal Commission into corruption, was the first of its kind to be set up outside Europe and inspired a number of similar centres around the globe. Today 92 such facilities operate in 61 cities across the world.