An outspoken MP wants new safe injecting rooms in three Melbourne suburbs to combat drug deaths and ambulance callout numbers.
By Rhiannon Tuffield | Image: News Corp Australia
A Victorian politician says the government should be building more safe injecting rooms right across Melbourne, in a bid to curb deaths and reduce ambulance callouts.
Fiona Patten wants to increase the number of supervised injecting rooms in Melbourne to five, after the government committed to building a second facility in Melbourne’s CBD last year.
Alongside the existing North Richmond facility, and a second centre proposed for the CBD, the Reason Party leader has suggested locations in St Kilda, Footscray and Dandenong.
“People are dying from overdoses, not just in North Richmond but in various other parts of the city and we should respond to that by opening location specific facilities,” Ms Patten told NCA Newswire.
“The new ones could be very much tailored to the locations.”
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“The types of drugs that are starting to emerge are a lot stronger than heroin, and if users could test that we would be able to collect a lot more data about what’s on the market, and we’d also save more lives,” Ms Patten said.
“I think the people who have had to call an ambulance because someone was dying in their driveway, or have had to provide CPR to someone on the street – we know they want to see a different approach.”
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