Fentanyl ‘epidemic’ a deadly threat

Up to 6000 people could die in Australia if the US experience of fentanyl is replicated here.

David Stanley, one of the main drivers behind the safe injecting room and drug law reform, has warned that an influx of fentanyl into Australia in epidemic proportions is distinctly possible. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

Australia is at risk of a relentless wave of US-style fentanyl deaths unless governments embrace law reform that prioritises education and harm minimisation above punitive law and order responses, a leading campaigner has warned.

David Stanley, who was a driving force behind Melbourne’s medical-supervised injecting centre, has warned that an influx of fentanyl in epidemic proportions is distinctly possible, given Australia’s huge borders and its growing popularity among traffickers who substitute the substance in heroin without telling users.

He said Australia should seriously consider scrapping penalties for personal drug use, creating a threshold level where people were given health, treatment or education options rather than facing the full weight of the law.

Mr Stanley said 72,000 opioid deaths in the US in 2017 was greater than the road toll and HIV/AIDS deaths and was a real risk of shifting to Australia on a large scale, requiring governments to open their minds to protecting people from the scourge.

He said Australia needed to shift its funding mix to an 80 per cent health response with a focus on peer-to-peer education, and more broadly treat opioid use in the same way as the country ­tackled the HIV/AIDS challenge in the 1980s.

Fentanyl is an opioid prescribed in cases of chronic, severe pain, including for major trauma and surgery, but its use as an illicit substance and substitute in heroin has exploded around the world, even though the dose size is very hard to predict and often deadly.

The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission warned last year that the population-weighted consumption of fentanyl locally had soared in the past two years.

Mr Stanley has calculated that if the 2017 US opioids toll were replicated in Australia, up to 6000 people could die. He said the US experience was that poorly educated white people were most at risk and opioid deaths in 2017 amounted to nearly twice the deaths of US military for 10 years of the Vietnam War.

“Australia should consider scrapping penalties for personal possession or use,’’ he said. “We should create a threshold level for possession for personal use of drugs. Those found with that amount or less will face a first-line approach where health, treatment and social options are offered.

“This is rather than the current criminalisation first then health second. Switzerland and Portugal have demonstrated significant success with this policy.’’

The National Coronial Information Service said 498 fentanyl-related deaths were recorded between January 2010 and December 2015. Fentanyl is a prescription drug.

Mr Stanley, the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation treasurer, was one of several campaigners to have pushed for decades to introduce a medically supervised injecting centre in ­Victoria.

Before the injecting facility was approved, campaigners commissioned a giant mural in Richmond dedicated to dozens of people who had died from overdoses. The mural read: “You talk we die.’’

State Labor failed nearly 20 years ago to introduce the policy and a centre was finally introduced for trial in inner-city Richmond last year after the ALP fought the Greens in an inner-city by-election.

While Sydney has successfully run a centre in inner-east Kings Cross since 2001, the issue was highly politicised in Victoria, mainly by the state Coalition.