The voices in support of such a centre have become louder after Coroner Jacqui Hawkins recommended a trial.

Yet Premier Daniel Andrews remains stubbornly opposed to a measure that is widely accepted as saving lives.

The official line from MPs is against an injecting room but privately many support it.

The coroner's recommendation came at the end of a lengthy inquiry into the overdose death of a 34-year-old woman known as Ms A in North Richmond.

The long list of groups calling for a safe injecting room includes doctors, nurses, drug and alcohol workers, emergency services and Richmond residents.

It is baffling why the Premier and his ministers feel they know better and can ignore the pleas of all the experts.

Perhaps the proposal does not fit with the government's tough on crime rhetoric at a time when it is struggling with what many voters see as a law and order crisis.

The government has instead pointed to other "harm minimisation" measures for dealing with the drug problem.

In Sydney, a safe injecting room has operated for about 15 years, saving thousands of people from overdosing.

Residents in the marginal electorate of Richmond are tired of finding used syringes in their streets and they fear stumbling across people dying from overdoses.

In Victoria there were 172 heroin overdose deaths in 2015.

Saving lives should be incentive enough for the Victorian government. But now it has the added motivation of potentially shoring up votes.

The Greens have promised to make a safe injecting room an election issue in Richmond – a seat Labor holds by just 1.9 per cent.

This is an opportunity for Labor to nullify this problem as a local issue before the 2018 election.

The government may fear it will be seen as weak on law and order if it agrees to a trial. But a safe injecting room would help to take drug users off the streets and give them access to health services and rehab.

It seems the greatest impediment to saving the lives of people dying on the streets is a lack of political courage.