Stronger heroin on the streets of Melbourne is resulting in a spike in overdoses in the CBD, with community health organisations saying they are buckling under the increased strain.
The most recent data from the Victorian coroner’s court shows between July 2020 and June 2022 Melbourne’s city centre had the highest amount of fatal heroin overdoses of any local government area. There were 29 deaths, followed by 28 in Brimbank and 23 in the City of Yarra.
Data from Youth Projects, which runs several drug safety services, shows every month an extra 1,000 people are accessing their needle syringe program, with 12,000 clean syringe kits now handed out each month.
The chief executive of Youth Projects, Ben Vasiliou, said they anticipate the number of clients needing services will surpass pre-pandemic levels by June as heroin use increases.
In the past 11 months, 9,000 people have accessed the services, compared with before the pandemic, when 11,000 people used the service each year.
“Drug patterns in the CBD are on the rise, and unsafe injecting in laneways and public toilets is increasing,” Vasiliou said.
“We’re busier than ever, and the intersection with homelessness caused by economic pressures is putting more pressure on CBD-based services.”
Cohealth, a community health organisation and provider of choice for the second safe-injecting room, says the increase in potency of heroin on the streets and a lower tolerance among the community has resulted in a spike in overdoses.
“We’re attending more overdoses and we’re seeing a significant increase in the need for people wanting naloxone, the overdose-reversing drug,” Greg Denham, the community partnerships facilitator said.
“We’re seeing an increase in the availability of heroin and the indicators show that the purity, the quality of the drug has also increased as well.”
During the pandemic lockdown, the supply of heroin dwindled, and people switched to other drugs to get by, he said. But now borders are back open, heroin has flooded the market and people are administering the same amount they would pre-covid, leading to a spike in overdoses.
Cohealth’s City Street Health team has recorded almost a threefold increase over the past six months – making contact with 100 clients last July, compared with 285 in January and 254 in February.
“There’s a lag in the data so we rely very heavily on our own experiences of what we are seeing in the city,” Denham said. “Our outreach team has experienced a significant increase over the past six to eight months.”
A report by the former police commissioner Ken Lay into the viability of a second safe injecting room in the CBD is expected to be completed this month and will recommend the best site for the second safe-injecting room – believed to be the former Yooralla building on Flinders Street.
Vasiliou said the rise in overdoses and the number of deaths related to opioid overdose was “evidence to just bite the bullet and open the service”.
“We can’t have bureaucrats constantly vetoing locations,” he said. “Wherever you put it, there will be unhappy traders. But truth be told, it’s unhappy traders or more deaths.”
Dan Lubman, the clinical director of Turning Point, the national centre of addiction research, said the facility in Richmond has saved 63 lives and managed more than 6,000 overdoses and no fatalities.
“We know [the Richmond clinic] plays an important role in reducing ambulance callouts for opioid overdoses and we’re seeing fewer overdose admissions for the nearest public emergency departments,” Lubman said. “So we know it saves lives.
“We also know there are significant rates of opioid overdose happening in the CBD and we need to put services where they’re going to have the biggest impact.”
