Melbourne’s drug crisis worsens as heroin users flood streets around injecting room

Melbourne is in the grip of its worst ever heroin crisis with drug users in a zombie-like state flooding one suburb. WARNING: Confronting.

WARNING: Confronting images.

A man in a wheelchair is unconscious and bleeding from wounds all over his legs. He sits alone on the bustling strip known as Melbourne’s ‘Little Vietnam’ for its array of Asian restaurants and supermarkets.

Empty soft drink cans litter his lap and his feet are scabbed and cracked and swollen.

It is 9.30am on a Monday in North Richmond, just a five-minute tram ride from the CBD. But it could be any day.

A day later, the same man is pushing himself along Lennox Street towards one of the most controversial buildings in the city — Melbourne’s only safe injecting room — but he is not using the footpath.

Instead, he rolls down the middle of the road, across traffic, as cars bank up behind him.

He turns left into the green building that divides commission towers on one side and Richmond West Primary School on the other.

Less than 10 minutes later he emerges.

A drug user pictured in North Richmond this week was unconscious by the side of Victoria Street. Picture: News.com.au

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Drug users who come to North Richmond from across the city were witnessed this week making regular, brief visits to the facility.

It is, locals say, to secure syringes — many of which end up scattered around the footpaths and gardens until council staff collect them.

The Victorian Opposition last year said as many as 18,000 needles a month were being collected by council.

But needles are not the only problem.

Melbourne is the country’s heroin capital. Users here account for almost half of the nation’s heroin use, according to the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission’s most recent wastewater testing statistics. And it’s only getting worse.

Consumption of heroin, in both doses per day and grams per day, are at their highest levels since 2017.

Heroin consumption in Melbourne is at a five-year high but a safe injecting room is saving lives.

News.com.au visited the area around the safe injecting room on multiple days this week and witnessed drug users screaming at passersby, rolling around in the grass, stopping traffic and sleeping on benches.

They gathered on the corner of Lennox and Victoria streets in large numbers, sometimes as many as 15 at a time. As a result, it has become a part of the city many avoid because of anti-social behaviour.

Police push pram from injecting room

News.com.au can reveal exclusive details about a disturbing incident on Australia Day last week.

A photograph circulating on social media showed two female police officers walking away from the injecting room with a pram.

A police spokesperson said police found a small child outside the facility about 5.10pm on January 26.

“The child was not injured and was taken by the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing (DFFH).”

News.com.au has approached DFFH for comment.

Police officers remove a pram after a small child was found outside the safe injecting room in North Richmond on Australia Day. Picture: Facebook.

It is just one of dozens of troubling incidents in the area that have led to a wave of opposition to a proposal to establish a second safe injecting room in Melbourne.

Last year news.com.au shared an image of a man passed out on the street outside the facility. He was clutching syringes and appeared to have overdosed.

Other incidents include:

- A man entering the grounds of Richmond West Primary School with a knife, forcing children to hide under desks,

- A man exposing himself outside the same school fence,

- Two people who made their way into the school via a side gate and appeared to have sex inside school grounds.

News.com.au last year obtained a 32-page document that revealed traumatic “experiences of Richmond West Primary School families”.

In it, parents talked about the school having “two lockdowns in one week”, children “needing professional counselling” and kids under 10 picking up needles.

“He bent down and in the flash of an eye he’d picked up a syringe,” one parent wrote. “I got a fright and yelled at him to drop it - he was very distressed.”

A drug user is unconscious outside the medically supervised injecting centre in North Richmond.

Residents who spoke to news.com.au said drug use outside the facility and anti-social behaviour are a part of daily life now.

“Every single day (drug users) are outside. It’s not safe. And when we say that, people just want to talk about how many lives are saved,” said one resident, who did not wish to be named.

It is true. The facility is saving lives.

North Richmond Community Health, which manages the safe injecting room, says that between 2018 and 2023 there were almost 8000 overdoses inside the facility and all were safely managed.

Most overdoses were treated with oxygen but some required the use of an opioid that reverses the effects of heroin.

It is on the back of those statistics that supporters of the program are lobbying for a second site to be established.

The state government is currently weighing a proposal to establish the second safe injecting room at a Salvation Army hub in Bourke Street, right in the heart of the CBD.

The Greens are on board, and have suggested it should cater to drug users under 18, too.

But Opposition Leader John Pesutto is among those against it. He says the CBD is not suitable.

“It’s just not the right location for that to happen,” he told reporters last year.

A man drifts in and out of consciousness near the safe injecting room in North Richmond. Picture: news.com.au

Melbourne City Council earlier shot down a plan to establish the safe injecting room near the Queen Victoria Market. But calls continue to grow for the city to do more for those addicted to drugs.

‘We are heartbroken’

The group Keep Our City Alive, which includes parents of drug users who overdosed and died, is leading the charge on that front.

“We want our city to be a place where everyone can flourish and belong,” the group writes online.

“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.

​“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.”