A discarded syringe beneath Yarra Trams' new elevated tram stop on Victoria Street, Richmond. He also wants a feasibility study into a needle van, and says it would ultimately be the only way of dealing with the drug hot-spot. "The council and the state government have been doing nothing - nothing is not working," said Mr Landes. "Every week as I canvassed support [on Victoria Street] the biggest response from the traders and residents was problems with 'the druggies'," Mr Landes said. Yarra Council has rejected a push for CCTV since 2011, saying it would just push drugs into surrounding streets.

Yarra mayor Amanda Stone says drug use on Victoria Street is at 'crisis point'. The council backed a supervised injecting facility, citing the success of Kings Cross' injecting centre. Victoria Street businesses have previously recoiled at that idea. "The problem is now so severe that, if the proposal is a mobile injecting room, we would welcome it," said Dieu Nguyen, vice-president of the Victoria Street Business Association. While Ms Nguyen stressed this was her personal opinion, not a formal position taken by the association, its president, Meca Ho, also said he supported Mr Landes' proposal. Ms Nguyen said a mobile facility would avoid the permanent stigma of a drug injecting centre.

"If it does not need to be just our problem forever, we can support it." CCTV must be installed, she said, because there were daily confrontations on the strip and cameras monitored by police might dissuade people coming there to score. Yarra Council acknowledges the serious drug problem around Victoria Street. "North Richmond remains a focal point for the trade and misuse of illicit opiates," the council's planning director said in a letter last month. "Living in that particular part of Yarra brings with it issues that most members of the community do not have to deal with on a daily basis." Mental Health Minister Martin Foley ruled out supporting a drug injecting facility anywhere in Victoria.

And local Labor MP Richard Wynne said that, while there were "clearly serious social issues" on Victoria Street, he did not back an injecting facility. Mr Wynne said the government supported harm minimisation, and that the state's CCTV funding offer stood. ""If the council continue to refuse, we will go it on our own," Mr Wynne said. Two drug experts backed the call for an injecting room, saying the evidence was irrefutable it would reduce deaths, lower dangers to the community and help more people escape addiction. Researchers at the Burnet Institute have studied injecting drug use in North Richmond for a decade. The institute's Paul Dietze agreed with Yarra Council's view that CCTV would not fix Victoria Street. "[It] just displaces things and does little to improve amenity," he said.

Professor Dietze said a needle van would be a step forward if a permanent injecting centre could not be established. "There are mobile facilities in Barcelona and Berlin and they are an option. But they really don't have the same capacity as a fixed site." The scale of North Richmond's drug problem justified a permanent injecting centre, he said. "The evidence says that it reduces fatal overdoses, there is an improvement in amenity - less discarded syringes, less street based drug crime - and it means there is a mechanism by which the market is more regulated and controlled." He also said legalised injecting centres could provide referrals to other services, and help reduce the spread of blood-borne viruses such as Hepatitis C and HIV. While all recent Victorian governments had dismissed supervised injecting centres, Professor Deitze said it was time to re-visit the idea because the evidence they worked was irrefutable.

Sam Biondo, Victorian Alcohol and Drug Association executive officer, said turning a blind eye to a supervised injecting facility had "got us nowhere". He said North Richmond was now a drug epicentre. "We should be adult enough to have a conversation about an injecting facility, whether it's a permanent facility or a mobile one," he said. At the end of 2015, former premier Jeff Kennett Former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett said a safe drug-injecting room should be established in Victoria, saying homeless drug users should not simply be left to die.