Calls for better opioid overdose prevention in Australian prisons
Friday, 26 July, 2024.
Fremantle Prison in 2015. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Prison and health experts including NUAA have raised concerns over the safety of Australian inmates following a rise in detections of nitazenes, an extremely strong lab-made opioid, across the country.
Unease stems from the fact that people in prison don’t have the same access to harm reduction programs as others, and former inmates are especially vulnerable to overdose in the days and weeks following release.
Nitazenes are a class of synthetic opioids, meaning they are produced in a laboratory rather than from natural substances found in the opium poppy plant. Chemists first developed nitazenes in the 1950s as pharmaceutical products but they were not suitable for clinical use due to their intensity. Even within this nitazene family of drugs their relative strengths vary wildly. While ‘metonitazene’ is 50 times stronger than heroin, ‘etonitazene’ is 500 times stronger than heroin
In April this year, the National Centre for Clinical Research on Emerging Drugs (NCCRED) released a report on the increase in nitazene toxicity reporting within Australia. Detections of nitazenes have occurred in almost every single Australian state and territory across the last 12 months. Within NSW alone there were 5 public drug alerts about batches containing nitazenes during this period.
Earlier this month, 4 people passed away from a nitazene overdose in a Melbourne home days after the Victorian Department of Heath issued a public drug warning about nitazenes entering local cocaine supplies as a contaminant.
Health authorities have recently linked nitazenes to an increasing number of ODs and deaths in Australia. They have also caused at least 15 overdose deaths in British jails.
Melanie Walker, CEO of the Australian Alcohol and Other Drugs Council, said, “nitazenes in prisons are a disaster waiting to happen.”
“We know nitazenes are in the illicit drug supply in Australia and it is only a matter of time before they enter prisons.”
While prison services may not want to admit that people use drugs in jail, no amount of invasive strip searching and surveillance has ever halted the flow of illicit drugs and trade of prescriptions inside jails. According to one study, almost half of the people detained in Australian jails report that they shoot up while inside.
A coalition of health practitioners, harm reduction advocates and experts including NUAA have co-signed a statement demanding every state and territory government immediately:
Provide training to custodial officers to recognise overdose signs and administer naloxone.
Ensure naloxone is accessible to prison guards in the case of an OD.
Ensure that naloxone and naloxone training is routinely offered to all people exiting prison.
“Health staff are not always available or accessible to people in prison,” Walker continued. “If we are going to save lives, we must find ways to get naloxone to people in prison when they need it.”
“Many police officers across Australia now regularly carry and administer naloxone. Custodial officers should be trained in the same way.”
Provision is currently patchy as not every state and territory provides training or access to naloxone when people leave jail.
“There are too few people getting naloxone at the time they leave prison,” says Ele Morrison, Deputy CEO of the Australian Injecting and Illicit Drug Users League (AIVL).
“To save lives, training and access to naloxone must be expanded and improved within all prisons.”
Here at Users News, we couldn’t agree more. These are worrying times for our community inside and we will continue to advocate on their behalf. We believe incarcerated people have a right to the same healthcare and overdose prevention measures as everyone else. No one left behind!