Supervised injecting room law passed in 1999 could still be enacted, says ex-health minister

It was in 1999 that the ACT Legislative Assembly first passed a law allowing for the trial of a supervised injecting room in Civic.

However, 25 years later, there is still no facility anywhere in Canberra where drug users can inject illicit substances while being watched by health professionals.

The topic was recently revived when Greens MLA Emma Davidson announced a supervised injecting room would be considered as part of a new review into drug harm reduction.

Does this mean a facility is imminent? Region caught up with the driving force behind the original law on supervised injecting rooms, former health minister and independent MLA Michael Moore, to get his perspective on the review and to find out why this reform has been so difficult to implement in Canberra.

What’s needed to make a supervised injecting room reality in the ACT?

Late in the term of the [former] Carnell government, legislation was passed to allow a supervised injecting room. That legislation is still there on the books. So it doesn’t require any new legislation, it just requires an administrative decision.

We put a sunrise clause in so that it took effect in early 2002. To the best of my knowledge, it’s never been overturned and it’s never been used.

Didn’t you have problems with the federal government when trying to enact this law?

Indeed. It was not only about supervised injecting rooms but also providing the heroin. Importing or manufacturing heroin is a federal responsibility; the then prime minister John Howard would not allow an exemption for a supervised injecting room.

A new review will look at the possibility of supervised injecting rooms in the ACT. What’s your reaction?

Over the years, we’ve seen a wide number of reviews.

Delay is always a very important tactic in politics. Everybody has used it.

As soon as a stroppy independent candidate decides they want to run on supervised injecting rooms, the government can say ‘oh yeah, we’ve got a review, so we can deal with it after the election’.

So we don’t need another review?

We have a facility in Melbourne and one in Sydney. There’s one in Lethbridge, Alberta [Canada], in a really conservative town south of Calvary. There’s enough of them worldwide to know what to do. We’ve had the experience; we should be underway with the implementation.

But the ACT Government says Canberra is different from these other cities. In Sydney, drug use is concentrated in Kings Cross, whereas here, it’s geographically dispersed. That’s why we need a review, to see what would work here.

That was the same excuse that the ACT government used in 2002. They’ve used the same excuse for 20 years. I don’t buy it.

But I guess all these arguments always have some truth in them. Someone who is wanting to inject heroin in Molonglo Valley is not going to get onto a bus and go to the city to use a supervised injecting room.

But do you think it’s better to have one than none?

Yes, and once it’s established we could see that it could be operated on the edge of other facilities. We do provide methadone through pharmacy. I’m not suggesting we should operate through pharmacies, of course not. But we have nurse-led walk-in centres; you wouldn’t put it in the centre but you might have it parallel, as an example.