Drug consumption rooms have been shown to produce a range of public health and public amenity benefits, and have been successfully established in Sydney in 2001 and Melbourne in 2018. ACT Health has been examining the feasibility of establishing a medically supervised injecting centre/drug consumption service (hereafter drug consumption room) in the ACT.
The research aimed to determine, for the ACT: relevant patterns of drug use, stakeholder views on gaps in drug harm minimisation services, stakeholder views on the need for a drug consumption room, and processes required for the implementation of a drug consumption room.
2020.
The research included:
In addition, the BI team supported and trained selected services to undertake snapshot surveys with needle and syringe program clients which add a small number of additional questions to those routinely asked of all clients when they access services in the ACT.
The study provided evidence on whether a supervised drug consumption room/s is suited to the ACT context and, if so, what form such a facility should take.