How safe are injecting rooms?

I would like to reply to Craig Munnings letter about medically-supervised injecting rooms or, as The NSW Government and the Victorian Government have legislated to allow, what they term "safe injecting rooms".

Just how safe are these Safe Injection Rooms going to be?

For simplicity sake I would like to use the street term used by the addicts themselves as a shooting gallery.

I would like to put forward a series of questions on the safety of these injecting rooms:

A prominent member of the Victorian Parliament, who is also a member of the Victorian Drug and Crime Prevention Committee, said in 1998 that if a pilot program was set up to be successful it was better that this is done in a number of sites rather then being concentrated in one municipality.

Question 1: How many shooting galleries do we need to have?

Considering the NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) problem the Uniting Church is having with setting up just one shooting gallery in King’s Cross.

Will the NSW Government legislate where galleries are to be placed and the locals will have no say?

The Victorian Drug and Crime Prevention Committee also said that it is a formal part of the Victoria Police policy not to have a presence in or near a needle exchange service.

Question 2: Does this mean that drug trafficking will be ignored or condoned by the police in or near a shooting gallery?

The gallery will not be able to provide drugs to the addict.

In order to legalize a shooting gallery this would mean that there would have to be a legal age limit.

Shooting galleries are not the place for children to be hanging around.

Question 3: What if a minor say 12-17 years old came to the gallery (there are addicts as young as 12)?

Would the staff order him or her from the gallery to shoot up in a dirty lane, toilet or park?

Or be forced to share his or her needle with other minors?

In other words to ignore the very reason the legalized injection rooms were set up for in the first place.

There is also the problem of older addicts influencing the ‘Sesame street kids’ the street term for young addicts.

The shooting galleries are being promoted as a safe, or at least a safer place, for addicts to attend.

Given the reason for the very existence of shooting galleries, means a reduction in risks to the addicts.

Under a duty of care and common law, any addict who suffers any injuries or loss would have an entitlement to claim damages at law from the Government as the Administrator of the shooting gallery.

The Uniting Church would be seen as being under the auspices of the Government.

These claims for damages could cost the community a significant amount in damages, legal costs, the provision of courts, judges, court facilities, Legal Aid and so on.

You will not be able to have drug addicts sign a consent form absolving the shooting gallery and staff from negligence.

As drug addicts may have an impaired ability to give informed consent when entering a shooting gallery in order to take their injections of heroin.

Users entering a shooting gallery would be subject to many risks. Whilst high they could for example, fall down the stairs, receive a hot shot of heroin, pass out unconscious and be robbed, or could be assaulted, molested, just to name a few.

Imagine an addict who has a large supply of personal drugs (remember they are not searched - it would be illegal) and is leaving the gallery and is followed by two or more other addicts.

Or assume an addict who has just injected an amount of drugs and walks out (staff cannot stop them, it would be illegal restraint and/or false imprisonment) walks out towards a car and drives home killing someone on the way.

Question 4: What duty of care would the shooting gallery and staff owe to the addicts and the community, as the addict leaves the gallery?.

Remember a situation where a bar person continues to serve an intoxicated person knowing that person to be intoxicated and then that person drives home killing or causing serious injury to someone.

That person can be held responsible in a civil court for damages, loss of earnings, medical costs and so on. There have been precedents set in this case.

Question 5: What if an addict was to bring other drugs into the gallery such as cocaine, barbiturates, or ecstacy and traffics the drug in the centre?

Will the staff call the police, turn a blind eye or ask the dealer to leave?

What if an addict says to another: "For $20 I will share my cap with you"?

How artificial would it be to say to the addict that he or she must leave the building, find a dealer buy what she or he needs then come all the way to the gallery to inject the drug?

If no drug selling will be tolerated, how will this be policed?

Many sales on the streets include drugs which have been cut with agents such as bleach, concrete powder, Ajax, talcum powder and so on.

Question 6: If there are no facilities for testing the impurity of the drugs brought into the gallery, what responsibilities, if any, would a shooting gallery have in respect of an injecting of impure drugs which may cause death?

Assume a situation where a person attends a shooting gallery and inject say four times within a short period of time and the addict comes in for a fifth injection which causes an overdose or death.

Question 7: What restrictions, if any, would be placed on that addict from returning for a fifth and possibly fatal injection?

Shooting galleries can be set up in two alternative ways.

Firstly, cubicles may be provided for the privacy of addicts.

If this were so then a system would have to be put into place in order to keep addict under observation in order that emergency treatment could be provided. It would also be necessary to ensure that addicts do not get assaulted, molested, robbed or harassed.

It would also be important to ensure that the cubicles were not uses for drug trading, fencing of stolen property and so on.

The alternative would be to have an open area but this does not mean that the problems as mentioned would not happen.

The practical implications, which I have just raised, are real issues to think about.

I myself do not have the answers. I am not qualified to give you the answers, but I hope that Craig Munnings or someone can answer them, then you and I will know if Safe Injecting Rooms will work or not.

Richard van Wirden, Woy Woy