{"id":109005,"date":"2017-07-31T03:21:19","date_gmt":"2017-07-31T07:21:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=109005"},"modified":"2017-07-31T03:21:19","modified_gmt":"2017-07-31T07:21:19","slug":"heroin-to-kill-more-australians-than-car-crashes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/07\/31\/heroin-to-kill-more-australians-than-car-crashes\/","title":{"rendered":"Heroin to kill more Australians than car crashes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Residents<\/a>
Residents of areas where heroin use is highest have appealed to the Victorian government to build a safe injecting room so as to reduce the risk of infection and overdoses, a move the government has ruled out. (shutterstock)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MELBOURNE, July 31\u2014 \u00a0More Victorians will be killed by heroin than by car crashes within two years, data released on Monday revealed.<\/p>\n

The number of Victorians who died from heroin overdoses has risen 71 percent since 2012 to 190 in 2016, the Coroners Court data revealed.<\/p>\n

Simultaneously, the state’s road toll has been on the decline with the number of people killed on the roads expected to be 250 in 2017, down from 291 in 2016.<\/p>\n

If the trend continues, it will be the first time that heroin kills more Victorians than car crashes.<\/p>\n

Geoff Munro, national policy manager for the Alcohol and Drug Foundation, said the prominence of heroin had reached levels on par with the mid-1990s due to the plummeting cost of the drug.<\/p>\n

Residents of areas where heroin use is highest have appealed to the Victorian government to build a safe injecting room so as to reduce the risk of infection and overdoses, a move the government has ruled out.<\/p>\n

“We are disappointed that Victoria cannot follow the example of New South Wales (NSW) of a supervised injecting room where people can get the medical assistance they need in case of an overdose,” Munro told Australian media.<\/p>\n

“With action and evidence-based action, we have done a brilliant job in reducing the road toll and we can the same with the heroin toll and actually save the public a lot of costs.”<\/p>\n

North Richmond, just 3 km from Melbourne’s Central Business District (CBD), has been hit hardest by the rise of heroin. Nearly half the heroin-related deaths in the area occurred in public places.<\/p>\n

Judy Ryan, a spokesperson for a safe injecting advocacy group, said a trial of an injecting room was overdue.<\/p>\n

“We always rightly look at the road toll and now we should now be considering the drug toll,” Ryan said.<\/p>\n

“Victoria has always been a leader in a road safety in so many ways when you talk about harm reduction and we’re good at that.” (Xinhua)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MELBOURNE, July 31\u2014 \u00a0More Victorians will be killed by heroin than by car crashes within two years, data released on …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":33739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1145,17],"tags":[20097,290,7534,20095,20096],"class_list":["post-109005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headline","category-news-w","tag-central-business-district-cbd","tag-heroin","tag-melbourne","tag-new-south-wales-nsw","tag-victorians","mauthors-xinhua-news-agency-via-philippines-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}