Victoria Greens to push for greater access to safe injecting rooms with proposed bill change

A trial at the North Richmond facility has saved an estimated 63 lives and safely managed 6,000 overdoses since it opened in 2018.

The Greens say the amendments to the bill are based on the recommendations of an independent review into the facility by the public health researcher John Ryan, which the government relied on when making its decision to make it permanent.

They include changing the wording to allow for more than one medically supervised injecting room to be licensed at the same time.

The Greens are also seeking to adjust the eligibility criteria for using the North Richmond safe injecting room, which currently locks out pregnant women, people under the age of 18 and those subject to court orders. People who need assistance injecting drugs would also be granted access to the facility under the change.

Biondo said people exiting the criminal justice system were also particularly at risk of overdose.

In 2021 a Victorian coroner recommended the government overhaul the way it supports people who use drugs when they are imprisoned and after their release, following the 2014 overdose death of a man a day after he left the prison system.

The coroner said in the year the man died, there were 220 heroin-involved overdose deaths recorded in Victoria. Of these, more than 40% had spent time in prison and 10 died within seven days of release.