November 07, 2022
Supervised drug spaces needed as Māori overdose rates climb
Māori are three times more likely to die of an overdose than Pākehā, according to a new analysis of coronial data by the Drug Foundation.
Foundation executive director Sara Helm says overdose deaths have doubled over the past five years, with 171 people dying last year, 27 percent of them Maori.
Most of the deaths were from opiods and synthetic cannabis, which is particularly attractive to homeless people wanting a break from reality.
It’s calling for an overdose prevention centre in Tamaki Makaurau, a health-based approach to drug control, and funding to make overdose reversal medicine naloxone freely available to at-risk communities.
“It seems a no-brainer to us – there are supervised drug use spaces or overdose prevention spaces operating in a number of different countries – Sydney, Melbourne, all over Canada etc – and they are very effective at preventing death. They don’t fix the underlying causes although they actually do help quite a lot because you get alongside the person in a way nobody else has,” Ms Helm says.
She says the fact 60 percent of people in prison for drug offences are Maori shows the need for a rewrite of drug and alcohol laws.