Sign this petition and show your support for a supervised injecting service (also known as overdose prevention service)in Melbourne’s CBD.

Without a safer alternative, people are currently forced to inject in car parks, in laneways next to restaurants and public toilets. Approximately one person a month dies of heroin overdose in the City of Melbourne; the highest of any local council.

These deaths are unnecessary. These are sons, daughters, brothers and sisters. All loved and mourned by families and friends.

In March 2023, the CEOs and leaders of 80 organisations including welfare agencies, legal services, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander services and religious organisations signed this joint letter calling for “a small, discreet supervised injecting service, embedded within a broader range of community health services such as mental health, housing, sexual health, oral health and allied health.”

Like us, they are concerned about the unprecedented numbers of vulnerable people who are overdosing in the CBD and the rising number of heroin-related ambulance callouts in the city.

We can no longer ignore the problem. The CBD community is crying out for a solution that will save lives, free-up ambulances, reduce the burden on hospitals, decrease discarded injecting equipment and connect people to the support they need. Our response as a community to this health issue should be a health solution, underpinned by care, support and compassion.

A comprehensive overdose prevention service should offer a range of health, homelessness and other social supports, alongside supervised injecting, which would ensure that people can access the health and social supports that they need, saving countless lives.

A CBD overdose prevention service would also connect people to addiction specialists and pathways out of drug dependence, such as pharmacotherapy treatment.

Supervised injecting centres have become a highly politicised issue, but if we take out the politics the reality is that they save lives, move drug use off the streets and connect people to care and treatment.

Our CBD community is determined to find a better way to respond to public drug use that allows us to save lives, connect people with support and reduce the impact of public drug use on the broader community.

We all want our city to be a place where everyone can flourish and belong. Where everyone has somewhere to turn for support when they need it.

Thank you for your support.