The Problem
Drug harms in Melbourne’s CBD are at crisis levels.
People are overdosing in laneways and public toilets at unprecedented levels and heroin-related ambulance callouts in the city are higher than ever before.
The City of Melbourne now has more heroin deaths than any other Victorian LGA, according to Coroner’s Court of Victoria data 2020-2022.
We can no longer ignore the problem. The CBD community is crying out for a solution that will save lives, free-up ambulances, decrease syringe litter and connect people to the support they need.
We need a health-based response to what is, at its core, a health issue.
A comprehensive CBD health service that offers a range of health care, homelessness and other social supports, alongside an overdose prevention centre, would help people access the health and care that they need, saving countless lives.
Supervised injecting centres have become a highly politicised issue, but if we take out the politics the reality is that they save lives, move drug use off the streets and connect people to care and treatment.
Everyone in the community wants the same thing, and that is to find a better way to respond to public drug use that allows us to save lives, connect people with support and reduce the impact of public drug use on the broader community.
The solution
390
Heroin-related ambulance callouts in City of Melbourne in 2021-22
29
The number of people who died of heroin overdose in the City of Melbourne between 2020-2022, the highest number of any local government area
63
The number of lives that have been saved in North Richmond by the first supervised injecting service
