Drug law reformers Matt Noffs and Dr Alex Wodak are pushing ahead with Australia's first supervised ice smoking room, in a move which directly contradicts the NSW Government's stance on such a centre.

Key points: Australia's first supervised ice smoking room may open in Sydney

Australia's first supervised ice smoking room may open in Sydney Being organised by drug law reformers Matt Noffs and Dr Alex Wodak

Being organised by drug law reformers Matt Noffs and Dr Alex Wodak Does not have support of the NSW Government

The planned centre in Sydney would provide clean pipes and smoking equipment and encourage contact with addiction health services, but not provide any substances to users.

"My understanding is we don't face any legal obstacles to having an inhalation room. The obstacles are all politics and crisis management," Dr Wodak told 7.30.

7.30 joined the pair as they looked at potential locations and spoke to air ventilation suppliers about the equipment needed to purify the air of toxic chemicals exhaled by several ice users smoking the drug in a confined space.

Mr Noffs said potential locations included the Uniting Kings Cross Medically Supervised Injection Centre, which currently supervises only intravenous drug use, or establishing an inhalation room at either the Randwick or Liverpool branches of Noffs' treatment centres.

"Liverpool would be a really important place for one of these centres. If we don't get permission and the community knows that we have the evidence to do this, we're going to do it anyway," Mr Noffs told 7.30.

Liverpool Mayor Ned Mannoun would not respond to 7.30's request for comment, but the president of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce rejected the plan.

Matt Noffs and Dr Alex Wodak.

"Having an ice room in Liverpool is going to project the image of Liverpool as the drug capital of south-west Sydney, we don't want that image," Harry Hunt told 7.30.

Assistant NSW Minister for Health Pru Goward told 7.30 that an ice smoking room did not have Government support.

"The NSW Government has no plans to open a drug consumption room for people to take ice," she said.

Dr Wodak and Mr Noffs said they were prepared to risk any consequences of setting up the ice room.

"We'd much prefer it if authorities would give us permission to do that. If they don't, we'd still like to go ahead," Dr Wodak said.

Do you know more about this story? Email 7.30syd@your.abc.net.au

Former Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Palmer supports an "ice room", and said many police would privately share his view.

"There's a wide recognition among law enforcement colleagues, including young officers as well as more experienced ones, that the current arrangements we have in place aren't achieving the outcomes we would like to achieve, that in many ways it is badly broken," Mr Palmer told 7.30.

"We have to be prepared to look at new ways of doing business."

European drug inhalation rooms

In the European cities of Bern, Switzerland, and Frankfurt, Germany, drug inhalation rooms have been in operation alongside intravenous drug supervision facilities for decades.

In a recent research trip, Dr Wodak and Mr Noffs were shown how drug users were increasingly smoking drugs rather than injecting them — a trend that Australia has closely followed.

"There's been over 130 studies into the effectiveness of drug consumption rooms and of those, they have found they reduce violence, they reduce crime, they reduce overdoses. In fact there's never been a single overdose in any drug consumption room around the world," Mr Noffs said.

Dr Ingo Ilja Michels is the head of Unit for the Federal Drug Commissioner, part of the German Ministry Of Health.

"There's no controversy, no debate, it's supported by all parties because they have been a part of reducing public nuisance, reducing deaths, reducing problems with the neighbourhood," Dr Michels said.

How ice rooms work

Dr Wodak said the main two arguments for an ice room were the availability of clean smoking equipment and getting users in touch with health professionals who could offer addiction recovery treatment.

Matt Noffs, whose book Breaking the Ice is a criticism of state and federal responses to the ice crisis, said the media had exaggerated the "myth" that ice was an inherently violent drug.

"The portrayal of the crazed ice zombie is not what we experience in the majority of cases," he said.

Uniting Medically Supervised Injection Centre acting director Dr Robert Graham told 7.30 he supported the creation of an inhalation room in western Sydney.

The centre has already supervised approximately 80,000 injections of ice.

"What we have seen is an increase of purity of methamphetamine," Dr Graham said.

"It's a bit like a whole group of people switching from beer to spirits. And that's why we've seen an increasing number of presentations to hospitals and other health facilities with health problems related to ice use."

'It will bring the wrong type of people'

The CEO of 1080TC, a faith-based substance addiction rehabilitation service in western Sydney, reacted against the planned ice room.

1080TC is one of the largest rehab services for male ice users in western Sydney, turning out around 150 reformed addicts each year though a 12-month education program.

CEO Mark Hill labelled the idea "a furphy".

"I just think that brings the wrong type of people, sets up the wrong type of vibe in western Sydney. We are all about demand reduction," he said.

Updated: A previous version of this article referred to Noffs' Street Universities. It has been corrected to refer to Noffs' treatment centres.