Disturbing photo highlights troubling city drug problem
Bucketfuls of needles collected from train tracks in Melbourne have highlighted a disturbing problem leaving families with no option but to find alternative areas to raise their children.
Staff from Metro Trains Melbourne collected a huge haul of syringes from tracks on York Street in the inner city suburb of Richmond on Wednesday.
Jonathan Lowe photographed the significant find, which he said was a clear representation of how severe the drug problem in the area had become since a safe-injection room was opened nearby in June 2018.
The facility, Mr Lowe said, had created more issues that it solved and was contributing to fear experienced by a family-friendly community that now felt unsafe leaving home.
“There are so many people injecting in the streets in our area, that’s why I took the photo, just as evidence of all the needles that are going around,” he told Yahoo News Australia.
“People aren’t using the safe injecting room all the time, and it’s just drawing in people from all around Melbourne and the city area.”
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The train tracks on York Street are just one popular dumping ground for needles, with the formerly popular dining precinct on Victoria Street also falling victim to a rise in drug culture.
“Victoria Street’s got very good Vietnamese, Chinese and Korean restaurants – they used to call it Little Saigon. Now they call it the Dead Zone,” Mr Lowe, a member of the Resident Action Committee campaigning to move the injecting room, said.
“That’s because the only people that go down that street now are drug users and traders. It’s just not a nice area. Families don’t go there, and because of that, restaurants have to shut up shop.”
Richmond families living in fear or moving out
Richmond mum Charlotte this week told Yahoo News her young son is regularly find people injecting outside the family home. She shared pictures of a man passed out and video of drug users confronting her near their home.
Mr Lowe said his and other families in the area faced a future of either living in fear for theirs and their children’s lives, or moving away from the area entirely.
“The safety of our family is very much compromised. We’re looking at moving out. I’ve got a seven-year-old and a three-year-old – it’s the obligation of the parent to bring up their children in a safe environment to protect their health. You just can’t do that here,” he said.
“We’re definitely going to move and we know lots of other families who have already moved or will move. People in the public housing can’t move because that’s the only place they’ve got.”
The injecting room – the only one in the city – also shares a border with Richmond West Primary School, which Mr Lowe said was problematic in itself.
“Safe injecting rooms should not be located in family friendly areas or next to a school. The area that it’s located in has four times as many children than the surrounding areas,” he said.
A second injecting room planned for Melbourne City
Mr Lowe proposed the room be shifted to an industrial area away from children and families, or to somewhere close to a medical precinct.
“We do care for the health and safety of drug users and we want them to rehabilitate and become better members of society, so we don’t necessarily want the room to close,” he said.
Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews has accepted every recommendation made by an independent review panel, which has been investigating the injecting room trial under way at North Richmond since mid-2018.
The recommendations include extending the North Richmond trial by another three years and setting up a second safe injecting room in the City of Melbourne.
The Department of Health and Human Services said its preferred spot for the new centre is community health organisation cohealth Central Melbourne on Victoria Street, a short walk from the city's Queen Victoria Market.
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