Does Brisbane Need A Medically Supervised Injecting Centre?

Dr Alex Wodak, Director of the Alcohol and Drug Service at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney, said that it is now clear that 'Medically Supervised Injecting Centres (MSICs) provide great benefit to drug users and communities at relatively little cost'.

But he said that 'they have unfortunately got caught up in nonsensical debate about promoting a drug free lifestyle'. '

There is nothing wrong with a drug free lifestyle or trying to promote that lifestyle' he said 'but some people refuse to even think about ever becoming drug free while others are unfortunately unable to achieve this state because of severe mental and physical illness or childhood physical or sexual abuse'.

The philosophy of MSICs is that 'while there is life there's hope: dead people can never become drug free'.

Most of the drug users who attend MSICs around the world are even more severely disadvantaged than the majority of drug users. Dr Wodak said 'MSICs try to achieve incremental change and engage with a group of people who are severely isolated in the hope that they will start to attend drug treatment and start getting basic health care'.

'MSICs reduce the number of fatal and non-fatal overdoses so that means fewer deaths, much less suffering, fewer ambulance call outs, and fewer patients in the hospital Emergency Department and the Intensive Care Unit'.

MSICs also reduce public injecting (in parks, laneway and toilets) and therefore improve neighbourhood amenity.

They probably also reduce police corruption.

But MSICs are only needed where there are large drug markets spilling over into a neighbourhood.

The best people to decide whether Brisbane needs a MSIC are people from neighbourhoods where there are large drug markets.

More than 80% of the residents from the area where Sydney's MSIC has been operating since 2001 are strongly in favour of keeping it going.

'Every drug user is somebody's daughter or son, brother or sister, mother or father' said Dr Wodak. 'While politicians are always happy to rain gold bars down on drug law enforcement despite a pitiful record of success, they are often reluctant to fund MSICs despite the strong evidence of effectiveness'.