A photo of a man clutching a syringe while passed out in a gutter in Melbourne has intensified calls for the location of an injecting room to be moved.
The upsetting image was captured on Tuesday and shared online to a community of people campaigning to have the North Richmond Medically Supervised Injecting Room (MSIR) moved from its proximity to a primary school.
The person who shared the photo, which showed a man who appeared partially passed out on someone’s front verge, speculated the individual may have suffered an overdose.
They said he was revived and paramedics arrived in an ambulance and took him to hospital.
The troubling scene contributed to the growing chorus of locals imploring the Victorian Government to relocate the injecting room.
A news.com.au poll of almost 12,000 readers showed 62 per cent thought the room brought too many drug users to the area.
Almost 30 per cent thought it was an important facility but that putting it next to the Richmond West Primary School was a bad decision.
The medically supervised injecting room initially opened as part of a two-year trial and was ultimately extended for another three years.
In March, the Victorian Government announced the room would be a permanent fixture.
North Richmond Community Health (NRCH) said an independent review found the room “safely managed almost 6000 overdoses onsite (now over 6300) and saved at least 63 lives”.
It had also taken pressure off local hospitals and reduced ambulance call-outs, according to NRCH.
Despite pushback from local residents, there is an ongoing drive to have the facility made available to more people.
Greens MP for Brunswick Dr Tim Read told 3AW on Monday he wanted people under 18 to be allowed into the room, as well as pregnant women and people under a court order – all of whom are currently not allowed.
“In our view, those people, if they’re going to inject heroin, are putting themselves at risk of a potentially fatal overdose, and they have the same right to be resuscitated as anyone else,” he said.
“So we would like that changed.”
Meanwhile, the reality of living in close proximity to the injecting room was highlighted recently by a mum-of-two who previously lived opposite and whose child attended Richmond West Primary School.
She told news.com.au that prior to its installation, the drug problem in the area seemed far less prevalent.
“It was such a beautiful, welcoming school that it just had everything we wanted of a community and we just thought we were totally blessed,” she said.
But as the effects of the injecting room started to pour on to the street, her blessed feeling quickly faded.
She said a lack of action to protect her children from drug-users drove her out of her Richmond home and into another state.
Another former parent at the school, Neil Mallet, compared the school to a “Supermax prison”.
Speaking to 3AW, he said it was a bad look for the school principal to be showing Education Minister Natalie Hutchins around and saying: “Look how safe we keep these people.”
The dad-of-two recalled a traumatic incident at the school involving a man entering the grounds with a knife.
“The kids were told to get under the desk,” Mr Mallet said.
“The kids have had to have counselling on the back of that.”
Responding to Dr Read’s call for the facility’s offering to be expanded, Early Childhood and Pre-Prep Minister Ingrid Stitt said the Government had no plan to do so.
“We’ve got no plans to increase the scope of the service,” she said.