This year Harm Reduction Victoria has expanded our policy and advocacy work, with our funding being extended for two more years following our successful co-hosting of the Harm Reduction International Conference in 2023.
After launching our Advocacy Platform and our 7 Demandments, we have begun a range of projects to strengthen the voices of people who use drugs in Victorian drug policy discussions:
Decriminlise drug use and possession
Expand harm reduciton activities
Safe workplaces for peer workers
Access and choice in healthcare and pharmacotherapy
Educate and destigmatise
Legalise drugs through community regulated supply
Build a Victorian Drug Strategy led by affected communities.
The expertise among HRVic’s staff, volunteers and community in harm reduction, health promotion and drug policy continues to be acknowledged by our funders at the Department of Health.
Below is some of the work we’ve been doing in 2023 and 2024:
Opioid Dependence Treatment Review:
Demandment 4: Access and choice in healthcare and pharmacotherapy
Our Policy & Advocacy funding involves a collaboration between the Department of Health and Harm Reduction Victoria to co-chair an Advisory Committee to review Victoria’s opioid pharmacotherapy system. This is part of the department’s new and growing focus on “lived and living experience” in policy and service design.
The decades of experience of opioid pharmacotherapy in HRVic staff and community, alongside our crucial and impactful PAMS service, has been acknowledged by the department and wider sector as important in leading the review.
Our Advisory Committee includes HRVic staff, allied clinicians and researchers, and peers with lived and living experience.
We’ve also formed a Community Reference Group of a larger group of peers to hold us accountable and ensure our recommendations reflect the communities’ wishes.
We are holding many consultations with medical and community health stakeholders to produce recommendations for more Government investment in pharmacotherapy, and policy changes to make access and choice more available to the thousands of Victorians who can’t access ODT.
Sarah Lord, PAMS Manager, presenting to a room full of opioid pharmacothrapy services providers as part of our community-led consultations:
Drug checking win!
Demandment 2: Expand harm reduction activities
After decades of advocacy, we are excited to have played an integral role in pressuring the Victorian government to legalise and fund drug checking services! Although our ability to do active, public political campaigning is often limited, we partnered with our friends at Students for Sensible Drug Policy Australia to monitor policing operations and get young people’s voices in the media after a spate of overdoses at music festivals in January 2023.
We partnered with the Victorian Alcohol and Other Drug Association to bring multiple stakeholders and potential drug checking service providers together to write a report and show unity to the Government that Victorians want drug checking services now! We also fed back community priorities around service design form a survey of members and community. REP_drug-checking-principles-of-practice_29042024.pdf
In June Premier Jacinta Allan announced a permanent policy change and an 18-month “implementation trial” drawing on many of the principles and recommendations in our report with VAADA. We’re pleased to see the central role of peers being elevated during the implementation trial look forward to working with the Government and our partner orgs to make sure Victorians who use drugs have access to world-class drug checking services!
Decriminalisation network:
Demandment 1: Decriminalise drug use and possession
With calls growing across Australia to address the harms of criminalisation, we’ve partnered with allies at the Burnet Institute to bring together a range of stakeholders across research, community health and community legal services to form a network and a series of working groups to develop a common stance on decriminalization for Victoria.
WATCH THIS SPACE.
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