Two former Liberal leaders in Victoria are at odds over a renewed push for safe injecting rooms to be introduced in Melbourne.
Former premier Jeff Kennett has come out in favour of safe injecting rooms, having changed his mind on the issue after visiting Sydney's injecting room in Kings Cross.
"I was worried many years ago, I have now changed my mind based on the overwhelming weight of evidence that now exists, " Mr Kennett told 774 ABC Melbourne's Sally Warhaft.
But Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle, himself a former state Liberal leader, said he was opposed to the introduction of such rooms.
Mr Doyle said he recognised there was an important harm minimisation aspect to safe injecting rooms but said they "are propping up an evil industry".
"It doesn't break the nexus between crime and drug use," he said.
"The production and the sale of heroin is an implacable evil industry that preys on the most vulnerable people.
"[Users] have to somehow procure the drug, and it comes out of the proceeds of crime.
"In the end, are you doing more harm by allowing an evil industry, like the sale of heroin, to flourish?"
Lord Mayor backs medically administered heroin
Mr Doyle contrasted the injecting room model with a program he saw in Switzerland where doctors administer heroin to users at a clinic.
"They were legally prescribing heroin to addicts and it was part of a program which actually weaned the addicts off heroin," Mr Doyle said.
"It was medically administered, it was state sanctioned, there was no connection with the criminal world ... and they could demonstrate that they were getting addicts off the drug."
However Mr Kennett said former NSW premier Bob Carr deserved credit for introducing Sydney's safe injecting room, adding that it "might be the best thing Bob ever did".
Mr Kennett said people in Melbourne were "just scared" and those in power "don't want to put at risk popular support".
"Bob Carr stood up to those sorts of criticisms, introduced the Sydney safe injecting facility, and it has been highly successful both for those who use it and for the community around it," Mr Kennett said.
Injecting rooms outdated, Government says
A spokesperson for Victorian Mental Health Minister Martin Foley told The World Today that injecting rooms were "based on 1990s ideas".
"The debate for safe injecting rooms failed to win support 10 years ago when heroin deaths rivalled the road toll," the spokesperson said.
Fatal heroin overdoses are now a fraction of what they were in the 1990s.
Associate Professor Craig Fry from Victoria University told the ABC's Bonny Symons-Brown there was an argument that money spent on an injecting room trial could be better used to improve existing drug services.
"It's about assessing these sorts of issues in the context of what the current illicit drug market is, what are the patterns of harm we're seeing from that, and really being able to tailor our policy responses rather than automatically and uncritically assuming that an injecting centre is always going to be the best policy decision," he said.
