FORMAL COMPLAINT TO UN – INJECTING ROOMS ENRICHING DRUG TRADE
A formal complaint has been sent to the United Nations International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) citing overwhelming evidence that Australia’s two injecting rooms – one each in Sydney and Melbourne – are both tacitly aiding and abetting the local drug trade, significantly enriching drug dealers.
The complaint, sent by Major Brian Watters, the President of Drug Free Australia who was previously a First Vice-President of the INCB and Prime Minister John Howard’s Chair of the National Council on Drugs during the highly successful Tough on Drugs era, cites the extraordinary rates of overdose within the two facilities. The Sydney injecting room hosts overdose rates which are up to 63 times higher than the overdose histories of its own clients before they register to use the facility, while the Melbourne injecting room has overdose rates a staggering 102 times higher. Even with 23% of Melbourne’s clients being recently released from prison, a situation which somewhat elevates the chance of an overdose, overdose rates are still 70 times higher than normal.
A Drug Free Australia report on the massive overdose rates and their implications for the drug trade accompanies the complaint, produced by an international team of drug policy experts including Dr Stuart Reece, a Professor at the University of WA, Dr Robert DuPont, founder of the world’s most prestigious drug and alcohol research Institute, the US National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), and Dr Colin Mangham – a Canadian academic well-versed in injecting room studies. Members of this team previously exposed a Lancet study on Vancouver’s injecting room that was shown to be either inept or fraudulent.
It is important to recognise that there would be cause for alarm if an injecting room had overdose rates just double that of normal street overdose rates. Taking the clients of the Melbourne injecting room where overdoses are the staggering 102 times higher than normal, its clients average just 3 in every 100 of their injections inside the facility, but the overdose rates inside are not matched for their 97 per 100 injections outside the facility.
Testimony from ex-clients of both injecting rooms which is contained within the report indicates that high overdose rates are from clients experimenting with toxic cocktails of drugs and higher amounts of opiates in the room, knowing that if they overdo it they will be revived by injecting room staff. These overdoses are literally from using more drugs than a normal everyday dose (that is why they are called ‘over’-doses) and can only be the result of clients buying more drugs than usual before entering the facility. This leads to an obvious conclusion – the higher doses are significantly enriching the local drug trade and lining dealers pockets. This makes both injecting rooms government-funded accessories to the drug trade, contravening United Nations Drug Conventions to which Australia is a signatory. State government obligations are to decreasing, not increasing the trafficking of drugs.
Drug Free Australia has written to NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews calling for the immediate closure of both injecting rooms. Formal complaints have also been sent to the Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs as well as the Federal Minister for Health. Academic studies show that one Australian life is lost for every 110,000 opiate injections anywhere within Australia, yet neither of the injecting rooms in a single year host the 110,000 injections for which one life would have been lost, indicating that they can’t legitimately save even one life per year in the facility. Significantly, both facilities fail on every other government-mandated objective. Any other government-funded facility failing to meet all objectives would be stripped of funding.
Testimony from a Melbourne ex-client now in rehab was that they had discussed experimentation in the room with literally hundreds of other injecting room clients. This is a most prevalent reason for using the facility. And today’s higher dose in the injecting room leads to that same higher dose from that point on, ensuring dealers of ongoing increased profits.
It is time for governments to cease breaching their international agreements with other countries, and stop lining the pockets of drug dealers. These facilities must be closed immediately.
Gary Christian
Research Director
Drug Free Australia
0422 163 141
Report is available on request to gxian@tpg.com.au