Two small children sit patiently in a pram.
Right next to them, their mother glances briefly around her, straightens her arm out in front of her body — and injects a hit of heroin into her veins.
A few seconds later, the mother hands a small package from her bag to some nearby men; they then prepare a needle and inject their own arms with the drug.
She then folds up a small pink cardigan and packs it away into the pram, ready to stroll on and resume her mothering duties as if the incident had never happened.
That’s just some of the shocking imagery caught on cameras by Frankston City Council in Victoria after the local Mayor, Darryl Taylor, urged it to set up hidden cameras. The footage was previously only shown to members of Victoria Parliament, until Mr Taylor chose to air the videos on A Current Affair.
The Channel 9 program broadcast the segments of the disturbing videos on Thursday.
‘We’ve had a very hard fight in convincing not only government but police that there is a problem. That’s why council undertook its own covert operation and collected footage,’ Mr Taylor explained to A Current Affair.
He said he believes state politicians aren’t doing enough to effectively regulate the way methadone — often prescribed as part of heroin addiction detoxification programs — is prescribed by pharmacies.
There are too many pharmacies that prescribe methadone packed into a small area, meaning it’s become relatively easy for drug users to onsell that methadone on the street, he added.
“Clients are not able to take away up to five doses from pharmacies when they’re on this program, and it’s creating a secondary market,” he said.
A Current Affair reports that several arrests have been made since the video was aired.
Watch a segment of the confronting program here:
Top Comments
Cement people into joblessness, hopelessness, and poverty, and see what eventuates. This. And this, people, is only going to get worse, and worse, as services diminish, health care stretches to breaking point, and people like this are demonised rather than helped. I've just read the 170+ page "rationale" for what this government is doing to demolish the safety net, and you won't be surprised to hear that blaming the poor for their poverty while pretending to offer "real work opportunities" as more and more jobs disappear, forms a large part of it.
Does anybody, ANYBODY, really believe that this is what someone wants from their whole life? Have you met or worked with people who grow up in such circumstances that all they want to do is escape, into drugs, into alcohol, into sex, etc? This will happen until Australia decides we cannot afford an underclass and puts the money, which will be well-spent, into actually helping, rather than marginalising and demonising, people who are addicted.
http://www.dss.gov.au/sites...
OUTRAGEOUS!