Marianne is Medical Director of Uniting’s Medically Supervised Injecting Centre (MSIC), Australia’s only supervised injecting centre. It’s a unique service that seeks to meet people where they are - the only place in Australia where it’s legal to allow people in for the purpose of injecting drugs. The MSIC has been operating for over fifteen years - and it’s been shown to save lives, provide a link into other health care and support services including specialist addiction services, and reduce the spread of blood-borne viruses. Yet it remains controversial.
So Marianne is here to ask some tricky questions: Why do we think about drugs and people who use them? How do we define a drug? What is it that makes us so uncomfortable? Should we provide clean injecting equipment? Should we provide a safe space? What, if anything, should we legalise or decriminalise? Or should we “just say no” and continue to wage “war on drugs”?
Come along to ask everything you’ve ever wanted to know about drugs, to challenge and be challenged, and to participate in a lively discussion about how as a society we could do things better.
Assisting with the presentation, Stafford is the Campaigns Coordinator at Uniting’s Social Justice Forum and an experienced public campaigner, journalist, writer and performer.