Drug reform
Exclusive
City life
Victoria’s only safe injecting room saved 63 lives. Now it faces a $1.5m deficit
Documents show new operators plan to cut HIV testing and nurse educator for clients at the North Richmond facility, used by hundreds of people each day.
- by Cara Waters
Latest
Steph had no idea stopping her antianxiety medication could be deadly
A treatment centre helping those dependent on benzodiazepines such as Xanax and Valium will be forced to cut its clinician numbers from 10 to three when funding runs out.
- by Amber Schultz
In Melbourne’s famous laneways, there is life – and death
In one laneway, people sip wine at a table under a heater. In another, someone is crouched behind a bin on the hard ground ready to inject. Their drug of choice is illegal, and without a safe injecting room, they have nowhere else to go.
- by Sophie Aubrey and Cara Waters
Analysis
Drugs
Jacinta Allan shows she’s not Andrews but risks her party’s wrath
The premier abandoned Daniel Andrews’ promise to build a second safe injecting room, despite her own faction pushing strongly for it.
- by Kieran Rooney
Updated
Victorian Parliament
Melbourne will not get a second injecting room while Allan is premier
Premier Jacinta Allan has drawn a line under the debate about a second injecting room in Melbourne by going against an expert report to say it will never be built.
- by Rachel Eddie, Kieran Rooney and Cara Waters
Opinion
Organised crime
When cocaine is washing up on your beaches, supply isn’t the only problem
Drug users can’t shirk responsibility. If a social media influencer posts pics of themselves using cocaine, they are participating in a supply chain dripping in blood.
- by Michael Barnes
Exclusive
NSW Police misconduct
Dozens of children strip-searched by police over summer
NSW Police strip-searched children, including 12 and 13-year-olds, in the four months after the Minns government promised to review the practice, an FOI request has revealed.
- by Caitlin Fitzsimmons
Exclusive
Victorian Parliament
‘Salvation is about saving lives’: CBD churches plead for safe injecting room
Spurred by their faith and dozens of overdose deaths, city church leaders have thrown their support behind a safe injecting room in Melbourne’s CBD as the government wavers on its commitment.
- by Rachel Eddie
Exclusive
Drugs
Affluent Sydneysiders driving state’s booming cocaine trade: crime chief
NSW Crime Commissioner Michael Barnes has taken aim at the upper middle class who he says are glamorising illicit drug use.
- by Max Maddison
‘An amazing quantity’: Sydney still in first flush of infatuation with cocaine
New analysis of wastewater has found Australians’ consumption of illicit drugs is scaling record-breaking heights.
- by Sally Rawsthorne
‘Radio silence’ for charity that could host Melbourne’s next injecting room
The commanding officer of the Salvation Army, which has been named as a possible location, said the organisation was “hearing nothing” from the government.
- by Rachel Eddie