Commentary
The future of Victoria’s contentious trial of a drug injecting room finally appears to be clear, with an announcement by the state Labor government that it will “introduce legislation to establish the health service.”
The government is taking this action following the finalisation of a review into the Medically Supervised Injecting Room (MSIR) trial, which found, in part, that the trial “has saved 63 lives” while also “successfully managing almost 6,000 overdoses.”
The panel made 10 recommendations to the government, including that the MSIR continue.
The government says it will consider each of the panel’s recommendations but ruled out adopting the second one which involves expanding MSIR access to include peer/partner injecting, amongst other things….