AFAO Media Release | Wednesday 15 September 2010

AFAO welcomes Sydney injecting centre certainty, calls for other Australian cities to move to rational drug policy

Best practice public health policy has finally won out with the announcement today that the Medically Supervised Injecting Centre (MSIC) in Sydney’s Kings Cross will be made permanent, according to the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations (AFAO).

AFAO Executive Director Don Baxter this morning congratulated the NSW Government on its decision and called for other Australian cities to consider similar life-saving health initiatives. “This decision by the NSW Government will save lives and is simply the logical, evidence based outcome from the mountain of medical evidence collected over nearly a decade.”

“The MSIC has significant support from NSW Police, front line health professionals and representative organisations such as our own, and for good reason. As a facility for harm minimisation and to prevent the transmission of HIV the MSIC has been an outstanding success.”

“We encourage other Australian cities to assess the benefits of initiatives like this in appropriate locations – 3,500 drug overdoses avoided is a lot of lives saved and trauma avoided.” Mr Baxter said the NSW Government decision heralds a sea-change towards rational drugs policy debate and development in this country.

“The so-called “War on Drugs” approach has clearly failed and it is time we moved to treating drug use as primarily a health issue rather than primarily a criminal issue”, he said.

“Portugal did this back in 2001 and since then has seen a 400% increase in drug users joining treatment programs, a 17% reduction in HIV infections and – despite the hysterical predictions back in 2001 - drug use has not increased.”

“The Portuguese experience now provides hard evidence as the basis for rational drug policy and we look forward to a calm and evidence-informed discussion - and to saving many more Australian lives.”