Good news! Finally the law has caught up with us taking care of each other. Today-Aug 4th 2021, legal changes in Victoria mean it is no longer a crime for community members to give out clean needles and syringes to eachother! Though many of us have been doing this for years and NSPs ask us how many people we’re picking up for, it has technically been illegal to give syringes to anyone other than yourself- until now!
Alongside this development, naloxone distribution laws and regulations are also changing.
How this will work is still being developed, but by the end of the year it should be possible for community members to walk into a service like an NSP and get take-home naloxone instead of needing a prescription or chemist to sell it.
Both of these changes were recommendations from Victoria’s 2018 Parliamentary Inquiry into Drug Law Reform and HRVic has been advocating for these changes for years.
