Disturbing footage captured the moment a woman injected herself with drugs in broad daylight in front of passersby.
A stunned motorist recorded the unbelievable act unfold outside the Nando’s on Clarendon Street, in South Melbourne, on Tuesday morning.
The woman squatted behind a car parked on the side of the busy road with her sleeve rolled up and a needle in her arm.
She appeared unbothered as motorists drove past her on their morning commute to work.
The woman finished shooting up, looked around, and then began to collect her things before leaving the scene.
The footage was shared to TikTok along with the caption: ‘South Melbourne – who needs coffee.’
Social media users were left completely speechless by the video.
‘Wow,’ one wrote.
Another added: ‘Sad.’
The unsettling footage comes just months after a passenger was spotted openly smoking a ‘crack pipe’ on a packed tram during rush hour in May.
The man brazenly lit up the contraband on the 58 tram line headed to West Coburg, a northern Melbourne suburb.
Many of the passengers around him were children.
A report released in October 2024 showed that 547 Victorians died from drug overdoses in 2023.
Men are on average twice as likely as women to die from overdose, and people aged between 35 and 54 are most at risk.
Metropolitan Melbourne accounts for approximately three-quarters of overdose deaths.
The figures, released by the Coroners Court of Victoria, has barely budged from the 550 overdose deaths recorded in 2022, which was the highest annual number in the past decade.
In 2023, the drug contributing to the most overdose deaths was the sedative diazepam – commonly marketed under the brand Valium – which accounted for 213 deaths, followed by heroin (204), methamphetamine (164), alcohol (153) and the painkiller pregabalin (78) which is marketed under Lyrica.
The annual number of methamphetamine-involved overdose deaths in Victoria more than tripled between 2014 and 2023 from 53 to 164 deaths.
The percentage of these deaths that involved methamphetamine alone was 15.5 per cent while 84.5 percent involved other drugs.
Judge John Cain, the Victorian State Coroner said: ‘It is deeply troubling that 547 Victorians lost their lives to overdose last year.
‘These deaths are preventable and we must strengthen our public health response and increase access to supports and treatment.
‘Drug-related harms are complex and are driven by a variety of factors including changes in drug use, availability and regulation.
‘That is why coronial data is so integral to understanding how best to target resources and save lives.’