A proposed safe injecting room to be based in Melbourne’s CBD has been rejected by the Victorian government, which claimed it could not find an appropriate location for it.
The government on Tuesday announced that a new trial facility – which would complement the existing safe injecting room in nearby North Richmond – will not proceed after concluding there was no site that balanced the needs of drug users with the broader community.
It came as the government released a long-awaited report by the former Victorian police commissioner Ken Lay, commissioned in 2020, into a potential safe injecting room for the city.
The premier, Jacinta Allan, said the government had earlier supported the establishment of a second site in the CBD and looked at “many, many sites for review as part of that process”.
“We were clear, in looking at different sites across the CBD, that the location needed to balance the needs of people who use drugs with the needs of the broader CBD community,” Allan said. “This is something that Ken Lay himself went to in his report where he reported that an injecting service trial has less chance of success without the legitimate needs of the community being recognised and addressed.”
Allan said the location had been “a sticking point” and ultimately the government was unable to find a site that “strikes the right balance”.
A $95.11m “statewide action plan” to tackle drug overdoses has instead been announced.
The then premier, Daniel…
