A high-profile former police chief has joined a group of doctors who want more safe centres for drug users to be rolled out in Australia's capital cities.

Key points: Former AFP commissioner calls for trial of consumption rooms

Former AFP commissioner calls for trial of consumption rooms Doctors says users moving towards pills and smoking ice

Doctors says users moving towards pills and smoking ice Successive NSW governments have rejected calls for new injecting rooms

Successive NSW governments have rejected calls for new injecting rooms Almost 1 million injections in Kings Cross centre and no deaths

Friday marks the 15th anniversary of the Uniting Medically Supervised Injecting Centre (MSIC) at Kings Cross in Sydney, the first injecting room to be opened in the English-speaking world.

Mick Palmer, once on the front line of the war on drugs as an Australian Federal Police Commissioner, was sceptical of the centres at first, but now believes a new approach is needed.

Mr Palmer also backs a trial of a different version of the centres, known as drug consumption rooms, to get non-injecting drug users off the streets and into a safe, regulated environment.

"I am convinced in my own mind that we might surprise ourselves through the positive outcomes that we might achieve if we were to consider things like consumption rooms where drugs other than heroin could be consumed," Mr Palmer said.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 4 minutes 21 seconds 4 m 21 s Former top police officer joins doctors in calling for more drug injecting centres ( Siobhan Fogarty ) Download 8 MB

MSIC medical director Dr Marianne Jauncey said the facility provided drug users with a physical space to safely inject with clean syringes, with doctors and nurses on hand in case of an overdose.

"There are people that are still alive today … that wouldn't be alive were it not for the operation of the Uniting Medically Supervised Injecting Centre," she said.

One of those people, 50-year-old Tony, came to Kings Cross when he was 15 and began doing heroin street shots at a time when drug users were dying in droves, injecting in full view of the public and littering inner-city laneways with dirty needles.

Tony turned to the MSIC after his friend recommended the centre.

"It was like an oasis in the middle of Kings Cross you know, it's like a big jungle there and it's rough and it's tough, it's cutthroat, you know people died on those streets," he said.

Ice epidemic fuels need for more centres

A founder of the centre, Dr Alex Wodak, said there was now a need for drug consumption rooms, as more users moved away from injecting heroin and ice to other forms of drug use such as inhalation and taking pills.

Proponents argue it would get ice and other drug users off the streets and into a controlled and safe environment, where they could be referred on to a range of health and rehabilitation programs.

"We don't have anywhere near the treatment capacity that we need in Australia and that's been really shown with the ice epidemic," Dr Wodak said.

Successive governments in New South Wales have resisted the idea of opening new injecting rooms, but privately some politicians now agree that consumption rooms may be the way forward.

Mick Palmer said it was easier for politicians to sell the 'war on drugs' message rather than the alternatives.

"We're not being successful, and we must, against that background, be prepared to consider all of these options … to thoroughly consider them and be prepared in some of these cases to take a measured risk and to take a gamble."

Dr Wodak said there had been almost 1 million injections in the Kings Cross centre and no one had died.

"It's astonishing that after 15 years we still only have one medically supervised injecting centre in the country, despite the abundance of evidence that shows it has been of great benefit and there haven't been any serious negatives associated with the MSIC," he said.

Dr Wodak pointed to places like western and south-western Sydney; in Melbourne, areas like Richmond, Collingwood and Footscray; and Brisbane's Fortitude Valley, as likely sites for safe injecting rooms.

But Councillor Ned Mannoun, the Mayor of Liverpool in Sydney's south-west, said more injecting rooms would "send the wrong message".

"We don't want these things in our community. People don't even want methadone clinics in their community," he said.

"We need to work on what are the real social issues that put people in a position that they end up using drugs."

Tony, who used the injecting rooms for about 12 years, said before the centre opened, his friends died on the streets from heroin overdoses, or contracted diseases from dirty needles.

"I honestly can't say where I'd be. Chances are I'd be dead. I know that just because I have OD'd a couple of times there, and because there are staff there who monitor you and watch you, I'm fine you know, I'm okay."