We are CBD residents, business owners, and workers calling on the Victorian Government to open a supervised injecting service in our city to save lives and connect people to the supports they need.

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For too long we’ve had other people speaking on our behalf, and we want our voices to be heard. We love this city and we love living here, but there is a crisis and we can’t sit by and do nothing.

 

We want our city to be a place where everyone can flourish and belong. Where everyone has somewhere to turn for support when they need it. Yet today, people dealing with a diagnosable health condition of drug addiction are dying in our laneways and public toilets.  

 

Every day without an injecting service in the CBD, we risk further loss of life, we risk leaving behind more grieving families. 

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We are heartbroken about the number of lives that continue to be lost from drug overdoses, especially because we know that if a supervised injecting service was available, a great number of those people may still be alive. 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 supports they need.  

 

Melbournians are compassionate at their core and we want to see an evidence-and-health based solution to the drug crisis. 

A comprehensive CBD health service that offers a range of health care, homelessness and other social supports, alongside a supervised injecting service, would help people access the health and care that they need, saving countless lives. 

 

We understand that some members of the community are unsure about supervised injecting centres as they 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.