The Role of Civil Disobedience in Drug Policy Reform: How an Illegal Safer Injection Room Led to a Sanctioned, ‘Medically Supervised Injection Center

Abstract

In shooting galleries, drug users are able to illegally rent cubicles to inject drugs. Established in Kings Cross, Sydney in the early 1990s, police grudgingly tolerated several such galleries. In 1997, a royal commission recommended that a parliamentary inquiry consider establishing an official medically supervised injecting center (MSIC). Despite strong evidence supporting an MSIC, a majority of the committee voted against a trial facility. As an act of civil disobedience, a group of concerned citizens established an unsanctioned MSIC. However, police soon closed the facility. At a subsequent parliamentary drug summit, delegates voted to support an official trial of an MSIC and invited a congregation of Roman Catholic nuns to establish the facility. When the nuns were instructed to withdraw, the Uniting Church was invited to establish the project. The MSIC opened in May 2001. It can be concluded that public health practitioners wishing to improve appalling outcomes from drug policies sometimes have to resort to civil disobedience in order to achieve their goals.