"He shouldn't have died in that way," Ms Warr says. "He was a beautiful young man and there was no dignity in his death."

The tragedy helped compel her to become a community health worker, supporting drug users who she describes as "beautiful people" despite them being among the most marginalised in Victoria.

Ms Warr now works at cohealth in Collingwood, where she tries every day to save the lives of people addicted to harmful drugs. She says support workers are dealing with a rising tide of dangerous substances, such as heroin and methamphetamines.

"The risk of overdosing from heroin and dying is as high as it's ever been," she says.

About 65 people access support services on average every day at the cohealth site on Johnston Street, including 45 people using the needle and syringe program.

Cohealth also operates about 10 sites offering a range of services, illustrating the growing problem of illicit drugs such as heroin in Melbourne.

At the Collingwood health centre, clients can make appointments with doctors, have a shower and wash their clothes. Nurses keep an eye on clients who may wander in under the influence of drugs.

On Friday morning one man had crashed out on a couch while staff checked his breathing regularly, ready to call an ambulance if necessary.

Cohealth chief executive Lyn Morgain​ says that while workers can provide a range of support services for drug users, they must turn clients away at the most dangerous moment – when they inject substances.

"The riskiest thing they're going to do is away from the staff that could save their lives," she says. "Our staff have lived with, more than once, providing needles to somebody and having them leave and die metres away."

Ms Morgain says a safe drug injecting room is long overdue in Victoria and the community is now warming to the idea.

She believes opposition to the proposal will soon fade if such a facility is set up – much like outrage quickly waned after the introduction of needle exchange programs years ago.

Meanwhile, demand for the health centre's services continues to rise, Ms Morgain says.

Every year more than 20 people on average die from heroin overdoses in a small rectangle of north Richmond alone.

Last week, a campaign to "end the need nightmare" was launched by ambulance workers, firefighters, Salvation Army representatives, Robert Richter, QC, Sex Party MP Fiona Patten and drug and alcohol workers. They want the Victorian government to back the introduction of a legal injecting room in Melbourne.

So far, the government has no plans to introduce a safe drug consumption room, but it has publicly backed "harm minimisation" measures.

A bill introduced by Ms Patten to establish a safe injecting room trial is set to be debated in Parliament this week.

Greens MP Colleen Hartland, who has campaigned for a supervised injecting room, says governments have been "captured by law and order rhetoric".

She says a long-running injecting facility in Sydney has proved they can be successful.

As debate swirls about the merits of establishing a safe drug-injecting room, such workers as Nicole Warr continue supporting their highly vulnerable clients - many of whom suffer complex problems, including homelessness.

But even for the workers, that can take an emotional toll.

"When somebody is using [drugs] and you know they're alone and you know they're homeless, that breaks my heart," says Ms Warr.