Former NSW premier Bob Carr backing Australia's first ice smoking room
Drug law reformers are pushing to get Australia's first ice smoking room underway claiming it will reduce crime, despite the NSW State Government fighting against the plan.
Like the Kings Cross injecting room, the supervised ice smoking rooms are said to be a place where ice addicts can safely inhale the drug.
The radical rooms would not provide any substances to users, but are said to offer clean pipes and smoking equipment as well as addiction health services.
Liverpool has been identified as a possible location to bring in the rooms, but the local council, residents and business owners are opposing the idea saying it will take them back "to the dark days".
Harry Hunt from the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce doesn't want the rooms in his backyard and told 7 News the council is "trying to improve the image of Liverpool."
Korey Kalkanli told 7 News: “It’s Liverpool going back into the the dark days where we had a problem with heroin.”
Drug law reformer Matt Noffs, from the Tedd Noffs Foundation, disagrees and claims the rooms will make Liverpool look cleaner and make communities safer.
“That is to save lives and make the streets safer," Mr Noffs said.
"It will make communities safer and of course, push people into treatment faster."
Although the NSW Government is not on board, former Premier Bob Carr has backed the idea saying it is one that must be discussed.
“I think the principal could well be the same,” Mr Carr says.
The controversial group behind the idea say they are going to go ahead with the plan even if it leads to an arrest and believe the government will eventually back the idea.
European drug rooms
In Bern, Switzerland, and Frankfurt, Germany, drug inhalation rooms have operating for years alongside intravenous drug supervision facilities for decades.
A clinic in Amsterdam - one of three injection sites in the Dutch capital - actually distributes free heroin to long-term addicts as part of a government program created for hardened addicts who might otherwise commit a crime to pay for their fix.
About 80 users visit up to three times a day.
Most are men, and the average age is 60. Many began using in the 1970s and 1980s.
The main objective of the facility is to reduce risk to users so they can ideally cut back while reducing their effects on the community.
The plan comes just weeks after a man - described as the “face of ice” - bombarded Queensland police with roof tiles in three hour standoff.
The 23-year-old man had climbed on top of a stranger's roof and threw tiles at police for hours in what appears to be a drug-induced psychotic episode.
In exclusive footage obtained by 7 News, the man yells out obscenities while throwing tiles from the elderly widowed grandmother's roof.
The man was eventually pulled down and limping with blood over his body, he was loaded into an ambulance wearing handcuffs and medical equipment.
