How can safe-injecting rooms be legal while drugs are illegal?
Castan
Just Cases is a podcast series hosted by Melissa Castan, Deputy Director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law. It is produced by the Monash Law School.
In this bonus episode, recorded just days before the Victorian government's announcement that a safe-injecting facility will be set up in the inner-city Melbourne suburb of Richmond, Melissa Castan talks with Dr Kate Seear about how safe-injecting rooms and needle exchanges can actually operate under our laws.
It is the first safe-injecting room in Victoria, and only the second in Australia. A safe-injecting room in Sydney's Kings Cross was established in 2001.
The announcement comes in response to a growing heroin problem in Victoria. The ABC reports the number of Victorians dying from overdoses has doubled in the past five years, and in the Richmond area alone 34 people died from heroin overdoses in a single year, all within a four-block radius from where the new service will be established.
Listen to other episodes in the Just Cases podcast series here.
Melissa Castan is a Monash senior lecturer, and Deputy Director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law. Her teaching and research interests are Australian public law, constitutional law, Indigenous legal issues and legal education.
About the Authors
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Melissa castan
Professor, Law Faculty, Monash University
Melissa is the Director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, at the Faculty of Law. Melissa’s teaching and research interests are in Australian public law, constitutional law, Indigenous legal issues and legal education. She's co-author, with Professor Sarah Joseph, of The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: Cases, Commentary and Materials (OUP, 2013), and The Global Lawyer (2020, Lexis Nexis) with Kate Galloway and John Flood, as well as numerous scholarly articles and chapters. She's also national convenor of the Alternative Law Journal, and co-hosts legal podcast Just Cases, with James Pattison.
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