Dee Ryall: Second safe injecting room in Melbourne is not necessarily the answer

It’s said for every complex problem, there’s an answer that’s simple, and wrong. But for drug addiction, this could not be further from the truth.

There’s a saying that for every complex problem, there’s an answer that’s simple, and wrong.

Drug addiction is highly complex. Suggesting that adding a second drug injecting facility next to the Queen Victoria Market will reduce overdoses is wrong. Here’s why.

Australia’s Annual Overdose Report 2020 shows 2718 deaths in Victoria caused by unintentional overdose between 2014 and 2018 — 25 per cent to heroin, over 55 per cent to drugs like oxycodone, sleeping tablets and anti-anxiety medications, and 20 per cent to ice and ecstasy.

Projects to address complex problems, like reducing lethal overdoses, often start with a trial. The usual process is to create a program, execute it and measure the outcomes. That means collecting a bunch of data and analysing it to see how things went.

The data may show everything worked as intended, which usually gives it the thumbs up. Or it may indicate the project should be scrapped or modified.

The Andrews government’s Richmond drug injecting room trial has three main objectives: reduce overdose deaths, lower injecting on the streets, and get rid of inappropriate discarding of needles and syringes.

Dozens have been arrested in a sweeping crime crackdown surrounding Richmond’s troubled safe injecting room

A government hand-picked panel tasked with checking whether the trial met its objectives asked for the trial to continue for another three years. It also made some startling declarations and an alarming recommendation for a second injecting room — one not based on scientific data.

It said no credible analysis on Richmond overdoses could be done. That’s because the coroner’s data (the only real data on heroin-related deaths) showed death numbers 3½ years before and 15 months after the injecting room opened, were too low to reveal any significant change.

It also reported that the number of overdose deaths in the City of Yarra and other local government areas didn’t change after the centre opened. Tragically during that time, 25 people still lost their lives in Yarra.

This raises some critical questions that may be uncomfortable reading for staunch advocates of injecting rooms.

The panel predicts the centre saved between 21 and 27 lives during its 15 months of operation. It says these users overdosed so severely they’d have surely died had they not been resuscitated.

Add that to the 25 people who did die in Yarra, and it’s around 50 lethal overdoses in 15 months — double the usual number. A 100 per cent spike after the facility opened blows the usual numbers out of the water. This increase wasn’t replicated elsewhere. And the numbers didn’t reduce in other locations, so it wasn’t people coming to Richmond.

Statistics nerds call the spike a “special cause variation.

There’s always an underlying reason for it, and it needs serious analysis to work out.

It could be a potent batch of drugs on the streets — except that spike would also have occurred in other places, and it didn’t.

Richmond’s injecting room has been controversial in the area

It could be that increased drug taking is occurring.

An expert who worked closely with addicts at the epicentre of America’s opioid epidemic offered a deeply concerning insight.

For most who are addicted, unless they want to die, death is a deterrent to overdosing, so they don’t push the envelope. But they do look for ways to make their “high as long and strong as possible. Removing the deterrent of death can lead to more risky drug-taking behaviour; the user knows they’ll be resuscitated in an injecting centre.

This may sound ludicrous for those who don’t take illicit drugs, but most have a mental illness, particularly anxiety and depression. Add altered brain chemistry from drug use and the ability to make healthy decisions is severely diminished.

The spike must be investigated and explained. It’s a statistical anomaly that government spin can’t dismiss because it exists for an unexplained reason.

Meanwhile, the panel’s review also showed the remaining two objectives of the drug injecting trial are in trouble.

While it says fewer people are calling in to report drug taking in the streets and carparks, the number of needles and syringes collected tell a different story. They’ve increased.

Local crime hasn’t reduced, and residents feel less safe than when the facility first opened. Unsurprisingly, drug possession has gone up. People are congregating, dealing, and using where vulnerable adults and children live — around the public housing area.

Indeed, the panel said it needed more time to see if the “negative impacts’ that resulted from the local drug market could actually be addressed at all.

It is deeply troubling that the panel failed to identify and investigate the spike. It renders the recommendation for a second injecting site flawed. And it calls into question the whole report.

With evidence showing a 100 per cent increase in lethal injecting in the City of Yarra since the centre opened, the Andrews government must abandon its plan for a second site and get to the bottom of why the centre has contributed to this shocking change.

Independent university research and analysis is needed.

Otherwise, Richmond’s drug market, with its dealing, using and discarding of syringes in public, will be duplicated at Queen Vic Market, an area packed with tourists, shoppers and students. And with it, the huge spike in lethal overdoses.

Dee Ryall is the CEO of GWGlobal, a risk and governance specialist and former state Liberal MP