The streets of the city-fringe suburb of North Richmond just south-east of Melbourne have long been a hot-bed of heroin dealing and use.
You don't have to wander far from the main trading strip of Victoria Street to find discarded needles and other drug paraphernalia.
For the past 18 months, 22 year old Laclan says he has injected heroin most days.
"Normal day usually involves waking up feeling like crap until I get my first shot - Makes me feel good and blocks out all my problems and that."
He says he usually injects himself in lane-ways and back-alleys exposing himself to a range of health and safety issues.
"Normally - just get out my spoon put the gear in and yeah, you always got dirt and that can get into your gear make your gear dirty and that - that's never a good thing."
Social Worker Greg Denham says it's all-too common in the heroin-plagued precinct.
"They can overdose - they can get all sorts of infections and obviously they can die as well - It's not unusual to come behind these factories and other places and find someone who's overdosed."
He's among a growing group supporting an 18-month trial of a supervised injecting facility.
It was proposed by the Sex Party, which leader Fiona Pattern says is proven.
"We have seen the evidence in New South Wales and around the world that systems like this centres like this actually work - they save lives they reduce ambulance call outs - they improve the amenity of the area."
Concurrent inquiries into heroin overdoses are ongoing in Victoria, but Health Minister Jill Hennessy says current policy doesn't include a safe injecting facility.
"We've got no plans to introduce such a model I always bring an open mind to evidence and I'll be looking at the results of the parliamentry inquiry and the coronial inqest with great interest."
North Richmond already has an exchange where users are given clean needles, but they're then forced onto the street to inject.
That's unlike Sydney's safe injecting facility in King's Cross which permits users to inject in a supervised environment.
Auditing firm KPMG assessed the model after ten years and found that it both reduced drug-related deaths and exposed users to qualified carers.
Lachlan says his use is linked directly to homelessness and believes solving that would help him to embark on a drug-free life.
"Once I've got somewhere to live I should be able to stop it - I've stopped it before so ya I should be able to do it again."
