With few, and sometimes no options, parents and friends are helping to obtain heroin and other injecting drugs and supervising their use. The current maximum penalty for those doing this is, and the organisers of the so-called safe injecting rooms, is 15 years gaol. While the concept of safe-injecting rooms, shooting galleries and Tolerance Rooms is commendable, and far preferable than back alleys, toilets and using alone, they are currently illegal. To protect the rest of the community, and to reduce the risk of death, Tolerance Rooms are worthy of research and consideration. However, in Queensland with its present draconian drug laws, to resort to this places all involved at risk, including the Police who are at some time going to have to take action when a death or serious injury from overdose occurs.
Civil action is also a probability if a third party is injured.
The likelihood of politicians in Queensland allowing supervised injecting and risking being seen as going soft on drugs is highly unlikely. A form of compulsory treatment would be a more politically acceptable policy that could, at the very least, provide medical and psychological assessment and the chance of motivating people to accept longer term treatment. Personally, I find the frequent phone calls from parents desperate for someone to help them find their drug addicted children extremely distressing. Their is no mechanism to help. The policy is creating a Lost Generation, dependent on drugs, exploited by pushers, and rejected by society.