Church leaders calling for an injecting room in Melbourne’s CBD are at odds with business owners and residents in the city and in North Richmond who have long been campaigning against such a facility for very good reasons.
Victorian State Director of the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL), Jasmine Yuen opposes the injecting room, saying, “One only needs to consider the horrible conditions and social problems surrounding the North Richmond injecting room to know that the facility has failed to help drug addicts.
“Rather than saving lives, injecting rooms do more harm than good, as they encourage drug use by sending the message to drug users that the government is providing a safe haven for them to inject drugs.”
Yuen continued, “The increased ambulance call-outs reflect the increase of drug overdose tragedies. The truly compassionate response by the government and the four CBD churches would be to establish rehab centers to help drug users wean off drugs, instead of providing injecting rooms as a pseudo-sanctuary.
“Injecting rooms are a wide gate that leads not to salvation, but to the broad road that leads to death. Harm reduction only serves to prolong and complicate existing drug-related problems. It’s a vicious cycle for drug addicts who feel helpless.”
The ACL maintains that the compassionate solution regarding the dire conditions faced by many drug addicts in relation to their mental health and wellbeing needs, is to assist them to get off drugs for good rather than supporting a harm reduction approach. We call on the government and the four CBD churches to reject their misguided idea of more injection rooms and instead work together to establish a rehab program in order to truly save lives.
