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2 May 2023
4:30 AM
The Victorian Greens are introducing a bill to open the doors of government-run injecting rooms to pregnant women and children.
There is no such thing as a ‘safe injecting room’ because the substances people are injecting are, by decree of the state, unfit for consumption. That’s why the legislation is called ‘Drugs, Poisons, and Controlled Substances’.
This is the same Greens Party that has called on the Victorian government to ban junk food advertising because it might be harmful to children.
‘Unhealthy diets in childhood are associated with lifelong health issues, including preventable cancers and diabetes caused by being overweight,’ say the Greens.
Do you know what else is harmful to a child’s wellbeing? Giving them a place to inject themselves with illicit drugs. I am not an expert, but I wager the drugs are worse for the child than the odd Mars bar.
Why has nobody in mainstream media sat the Greens down and forced them to explain how they can be outraged about junk food and actively campaign to grant kids access to drugs? These two policies are mutually exclusive. They are ideologically incoherent.
These Greens ministers are a joke, their party is a joke, and their ideology is dangerous to Victorian children – not to mention the unborn children of pregnant women.
To clarify, the proposed amendment will make it easier for – in their words – ‘the most vulnerable and marginalised’ to access the ‘safe’ injecting room.
Gee, what’s the fastest way to harm the most vulnerable and marginalised? Enabling drug addiction would have to be pretty high up on the list of bad ideas.
The government should not be running any injecting centres, let alone running them next to a primary school, as they do with their (now permanent) trial in North Richmond.
The Greens claim to be keen on hearing ‘voices’, but they’re pretty damn deaf to the voices of parents at the primary school next to the injecting centre, who have been complaining since its opening that their children are in danger.
According to news.com.au, a three-page document was obtained that contains 32 statements from these parents detailing anti-social behaviour and drug-related crime because of the injecting centre.
‘After two lockdowns in one week, involving needing to get underneath a desk and hide, my daughter is traumatised.’
‘She needs professional counselling. She is terrified to come to school. My older children walk her to school; she grips their hands so tightly on the walk it hurts them.’
‘He [a child] bent down and in the flash of an eye he’d picked up a syringe. I got a fright and yelled at him to drop it – he was very distressed.’
‘When I looked at the spot he picked the needle up from, there were two other needles – without caps – poking out of the dirt.’
If a private citizen ran an operation like this next to a school, they would be in jail. The Labor Party should roll up the ‘Drugs, Poisons, and Controlled Substances Amendment Bill 2023’ and smack the Greens with it.
These substances are illegal for a reason. Turning the government into a drug den via the North Richmond facility is untenable. Allowing people to continue their addiction makes about as much medical sense as supervised anorexia. Harmful behaviours should not be normalised or indulged by the taxpayer.
‘We’re concerned that if we don’t take this opportunity now with this legislation to get safe injecting right in Victoria, that we will see the government walk away from future rooms in our state,’ said Greens Upper House MP Aiv Puglielli.
Good! The government should walk away.
If you needed any further proof as to why the government must close this abomination down, the push to expand it to pregnant women and children is surely enough of a red flag that the whole thing is an ethical disaster.
You don’t assist a child or pregnant woman to inject themselves with illegal drugs – you drive them to the hospital, or a rehabilitation clinic. Would the Victorian Greens sit there and watch kids light up cigarettes and down a six-pack whispering, ‘You just gotta sip it safely, Jimmy…’
‘For the life of me I can’t understand why they want to place people at high danger. Through denying these genuinely isolated, marginalised individuals [access], we’re actually losing the opportunity to refer them to other support,’ said Sam Biondo, of the Victorian Alcohol and Drug Association.
Being marginalised and vulnerable is not a qualification for a free pass to hard drugs. It is astonishing that anyone thinks this sort of thing is acceptable.
Mind you, we shouldn’t be surprised. Of all the places to trial an injecting room, the government set it up right next to a primary school.
If this amendment passes, kids will be able to walk out of the school gates and through the doors of the clinic to shoot up.
Is this the ‘dream’ of a progressive society?
‘If the experts are calling for more safe injecting facilities in areas across the state where drug use is affecting communities and where people are dying, then the government should support them, not back away from expert health advice,’ Mr Puglielli said.
I wonder if these are the same health experts that tell us men can get pregnant and confused children should be denied puberty?
The Greens don’t only want the North Richmond facility made permanent (it should be shut down immediately), they want more facilities installed across the state.
I’ll say this, if the Liberals can’t run a winning campaign on this issue, the party is worthless.
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