Safe Injecting Rooms Essay Example

📌Category: Addiction, Health
📌Words: 999
📌Pages: 4
📌Published: 07 September 2021

Drug rooms for people to freely insert illegal substances into their systems, or as they call them - ‘Safe injecting rooms’ have become one of the biggest debates this year. The current injecting room in North Richmond has shown its downsides but the government refuses to acknowledge them, and plans on building another one on the corner of one of the busiest train stations in Melbourne. The new Safe injecting room the government wishes to implant will only cause more chaos, like we have been shown and warned from the current room located in North Richmond.  

As we know already, there is a current safe injecting room which is located in North Richmond. The area of North Richmond is now known as the ‘druggy’ area, and is a dangerous place that many avoid, as you are surrounding yourself with drug-filled individuals. Not only has this injecting room become a problem for working people, but the positioning of this injecting room has caused issues to the younger generations as it was built right next to a primary school. What a careless spot to put a room filled with drugs! There are children from the ages of 4-12 who are frequently at this place, now affected by a group of morons who intend to inject themselves with illegal substances. These people are now easily able to cause harm to anyone around them, so why would you put them next to a primary school?

The warnings of the current injecting room still aren't enough to stop the government's wishes of building another one. There are ideas floating up in the air by the government about building a new safe injecting room on Flinders street and the corner of Elizabeth Street in the city. We have already experienced the harmful effects of the injecting room in Richmond, so it baffles me why anyone would want to build another. Especially with the location of the proposed room, it will only become a danger to everyone who wishes to pass, including tourists. Flinders street is a popular tourist attraction for many as it is home to the oldest train station in the whole of Australia. By introducing a new injecting room, the government is only going to kill off this major attraction and lower the number of people who are willing to visit. Furthermore, Melbourne Aquarium is located near Flinders street station, so there are many young school groups passing the station on their way to the Aquarium for an excursion. If the drug room is introduced in this popular place, these young kids will be at great risk of danger by these intoxicated people.

The introduction of this new safe injecting room will force many people out of the city. People who catch the train regularly at Flinders Street Station will become at risk of being targeted, threatened or even abused by those under the influence. If people’s regular schedule is put in jeopardy by this injecting room, they may begin to refuse to work in the city. It was shown through the COVID-19 period that it is possible for people to work from home, so people will ensure they are able to do so. However, the effects of having people working from home, causes the economy to drop as normally busy shops will lose regular foot traffic. In 2020 people were less likely to be in the city. This showed a great decline in the economy because people were no longer visiting their regular businesses. Or the $4 spent on transportation via train into and from the city was not being spent. These events throughout the 2020 COVID-19 dramas had Melbourne suffering an economic recession, said to be comparable to the recession caused by WWI and the Spanish Flu. Since 2020, Melbourne has “recorded a cumulative reduction of up to $110 billion in municipal economic loss” due to COVID-19. If the government’s plan of introducing the new safe injecting room succeeds, there will be a relapse of these recessions as people who are regulars in the city, will refuse to enter for fear of their own safety. 

The government has decided that the new drug room in Melbourne will be located on the corner of Flinders Street and Elizabeth street because “it needs to be as close as possible to where drug activity is concentrated”. Instead of the government welcoming people to drug themselves, the government should put more police security in the areas that are notorious for drug overdoses, in order to stop people from using the drugs in the first place. This will not only limit the amount of people injecting themselves, but it will lower the number of overdoses that occur in Melbourne’s CBD to stop “seeing the death toll go up and up” - Daniel Andrews. 

 

These safe injecting rooms are using up valuable resources by having medical staff present to ‘supervise’ in case anything goes wrong. Although this may help 1 in every 100 people, surely these medically trained practitioners could be better suited in an environment helping people in more serious situations. These staff could be benefited in a site such as a hospital or a medical clinic where their training is used for better circumstances. The government should be smarter, and instead of allowing these people to drug themselves under the condition they need to be watched by medical staff, they should toughen up and be harsher on drug use. 

Overall, the idea of building a new ‘safe injecting room’ proposed by the government is foolish because they have seen the effects of the current one in Richmond. They know that it will lower tourist numbers and it will cause a decrease in the economy because people will refuse to enter the city. Although many people believe that these safe injecting rooms are inplace to remove people from overdosing on the streets as they feel it will bring more people into a ‘safe room’ to do so, they are just inviting all of these drug abusers to a comfortable spot to continue to inject themselves with an illegal substance! The government knows that these rooms will attract more people who want to use drugs and will send away tourists from an already struggling city getting back on their feet from the COVID-19 hit, but they are yet to understand that these rooms are not what is necessary to combat drug use in the city. Therefore, these safe injecting rooms should be banned for the safety of citizens of Melbourne. 

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