New calls for Western Sydney safe drug injecting facility
Drug deaths in west and southwest Sydney are continuing at an alarming rate, with research into the region’s growing opioid crisis leading to new calls for a western Sydney safe injecting room.
NSW
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There are new calls for a safe injecting room in Western Sydney to help tackle the region’s growing opioid crisis and reduce accidental overdose deaths.
New research by UNSW Criminology Lecturer Dr George Dertadian found outside of Sydney city, the highest number of overdose deaths were in south-western and western Sydney.
The research used data from the National Coronial Information System to look at the distribution of overdose deaths across Sydney between 2006 and 2015.
Opioids were the highest identifiable drug types detected in fatal cases of drug toxicity, which had almost doubled in the period.
Liverpool, Bankstown, Fairfield and Campbelltown recorded 373 deaths in the ten-year period, followed by Blacktown and Parramatta, which recorded 275.
Most overdose deaths were accidental and occurred at home.
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While overdose deaths remained highest in Sydney City LGA, Dr Dertadian said it was likely there were as many or more people who inject drugs in Western Sydney but had less access to a safe facility to manage potential overdoses.
“The best available evidence suggest that these facilities are most successful within highly marginalised populations of people who inject drugs,” he said.
“Several areas of South Western Sydney have visible drug markets and include areas of concentrated disadvantage.”
He said safe injecting rooms could help reduce deaths and manage overdoses but also served a range of other functions including putting people in contact with health education officers who can refer them on to drug and alcohol services, as well as other social and housing services.
Injecting rooms in western Sydney have been consistently opposed in the past decade.
A push in 2014 was shut down by the NSW Government, and renewed calls in 2015 and 2016 faced strong opposition from residents and businesses.
A 2019 inquest into the overdose death of Amaru Bestrin, 25, in a Liverpool Hospital toilet led to calls from Deputy State Coroner Harriet Grahame for a second injecting room in Liverpool.
The inquest heard the region had a high number of heroin users, with more than 3100 people on registered opium treatment programs, about 14 per cent of NSW’s total.
Co-author of the research, Western Sydney University Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Professor Stephen Tomsen, said opponents feared increased crime and an erosion of public safety would follow if an injecting room was set up.
“But these claims are not supported by decades of research at injecting facilities in Sydney, and other parts of the world such as Canada, France, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Switzerland,” Prof Thomson said.
There is currently a record number of drug-induced deaths being recorded in Australia each year.
In 2016, more than 1800 people died of a drug overdose, slightly higher than the previous record of 1740 deaths recorded in 1999 during a heroin epidemic.
Dr Dertidian said while the rate of heroin overdose deaths had remained stable in Australia between 2001 and 2012, pharmaceutical opioids related deaths during the same period were 2.5 times the incident rate of heroin-related overdose deaths.
“It shouldn’t be seen as this will stop all overdoses … That will take an assortment of policies and this should be considered a major one.
“It allows us a place for people to go to manage their overdoses. We’ve seen that with the Kings Cross injecting centre that has been successful for almost two decades.”