Inside the UK’s first medicine ‘consumption room’ the place addicts can ‘safely’ use heroin and cocaine whereas underneath ‘authorized supervision’
A £2.3million ‘shooting gallery’ where users can inject their own heroin and cocaine will fuel addiction and overdose deaths, a leading drugs expert warned yesterday.
The centre, the first in the UK, is aimed at ensuring addicts have medical back-up on hand when they take class A drugs, rather than risking overdose on the street.
Those taking drugs at the centre will also be free from the threat of arrest.
Based near the busy shopping area of Scotland’s biggest city, the so-called safer drug consumption facility – called The Thistle – has been championed by the SNP government.
The Glasgow project comes amid spiralling drug deaths in Scotland – the highest per head of population in Europe – but critics say it will not help addicts kick their habits.
The centre is set to open on Monday at a time when hundreds of thousands of Scots are languishing on lengthy NHS waiting lists.
Last night, Dr Neil McKeganey, director of the Centre for Substance Use Research Scotland, said the cash earmarked for The Thistle would be better invested in getting addicts off drugs.
He said: ‘What we should be doing, and what the Scottish Government has persistently refused to do, is to provide long-term support services focused on recovery, rehabilitation and drug prevention.
Lynn Macdonald, Safer Drug Consumption Facility Service Manager, at The Thistle drugs consumption room
The facility – known as the Thistle – will accommodate up to 30 service users at a time, 365 days a year from 09:00 until 21:00
The centre, the first in the UK, is aimed at ensuring addicts have medical back-up on hand when they take class A drugs, rather than risking overdose on the street
The lounge area at The Thistle drugs consumption room at the NHS Enhanced Drug Treatment Facility
‘Addicts need to be helped to move away from drugs they have become addicted to, not provided with easier access to those drugs.’ He warned setting up such centres would lead to a rise in the ‘number of overdose deaths… and none of those who have allocated scarce public funding [to these initiatives] will be remotely accountable for the decisions they have taken’.
Scottish Tory drugs spokesman Annie Wells said: ‘The public will want this facility to be carefully monitored to ensure it is not exacerbating the drug deaths crisis. Ministers cannot act like this will be a silver bullet to this emergency and must also back the Right to Recovery Bill, which would enshrine in law everyone’s right to treatment.’
The ‘shooting gallery’ will cost £2.3millon for a three-year pilot project and will be funded by the Scottish Government for the first year.
Users will bring their own illegal drugs including heroin and cocaine and inject them in special booths before relaxing in a lounge area which has a flat-screen TV and books.
Addicts will have access to vein-finding technology, a clothes store and a shower, while there is also wi-fi, and tea and coffee are available. In the event of an overdose staff are on standby to help them.
There will be 31 staff operating the centre, which will be open every day of the year from 9am to 9pm.
Staff estimate there are up to 500 regularly injecting users in the area near the centre and hope as many as possible will come to the clinic, where they will also be able to get Covid and flu jabs and find health, social work and housing information.
They believe that once the users are in the centre, they can be helped into rehab and treated for infections, rather than injecting outdoors and sharing needles, or leaving drugs paraphernalia on the streets, which creates a public health hazard.
An injection kit that will be provided to users at The Thistle drugs consumption room at the NHS Enhanced Drug Treatment Facility
The Glasgow project comes amid spiralling drug deaths in Scotland – the highest per head of population in Europe
Bookshelf in the lounge area at The Thistle drugs consumption room at the NHS Enhanced Drug Treatment Facility
Drugs are set to be checked for dangerous impurities but results will not be instant, meaning there will be a delay before staff know exactly what users are taking. But it will allow staff to monitor the content of users’ drugs to spot any developing problems in the longer term.
The introduction of drug testing must be sanctioned by the Home Office, which is reviewing The Thistle’s application.
The Thistle is in the same complex as the Enhanced Drug Treatment Service (EDTS), a separate facility where addicts are injected with pharmaceutical-grade heroin, obtained by the NHS, rather than bringing in their own drugs.
Earlier this week, the Mail revealed that more than £85,000 had been spent on taxis for patients at the EDTS, which has cost taxpayers nearly £6million.
Lynn Macdonald, service manager at The Thistle, said it would ‘not resolve the drug deaths issue by next year – far from it – it’s a small service’, but added that it was a ‘starting point’. Asked how the success of the project would be measured, she said it could be defined as ‘one person not contracting HIV [or] somebody coming in here and re-establishing a relationship with their parents’.
Official figures in August showed drugs claimed the lives of 1,172 Scots in 2023 – an average of more than three a day and up 121 from the previous year.
The Thistle is run and overseen by Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership, which comprises NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHSGGC) and Glasgow City Council.
Dr Saket Priyadarshi, Associate Medical Director, Alcohol and Drug Recovery Services at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde
A member of staff demonstrates an AccuVein vein finding device at The Thistle drugs consumption room at the NHS Enhanced Drug Treatment Facility
Dr Saket Priyadarshi, associate medical director of Alcohol and Drug Recovery Services at NHSGGC, said: ‘We want to promote a safer injecting environment where people will get the support they need in order to provide a good alternative to the spaces they use at the moment.’
Meanwhile, bosses of The Thistle also hope to get permission for an ‘inhalation room’ where users can smoke crack cocaine.
They are in talks with the Scottish Government over the proposal, which could fall foul of the smoking ban under current law.
Cocaine use and deaths related to the drug are growing as its price falls, but medics are keen for addicts to smoke the drug rather than inject, which is riskier.
They hope the inhalation room will also attract users to The Thistle, which also has an outdoor patio area for cigarette smokers.
A Scottish Government spokesman said its officials would work with The Thistle to ‘explore how a possible inhalation room could be added to the facility in the future’.
First suggested in 2016, the controversial ‘shooting gallery’ has been the subject of political wrangling between the Scottish and UK governments.
First Minister John Swinney and Health Secretary Neil Gray are set to visit The Thistle today.
Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain, KC, effectively gave the green light to the facility in 2023 when she said: ‘I have concluded it would not be in the public interest to prosecute people for simple possession offences when they are already in a place where help with their issues can be offered.’
Is is thought police officers will only take action if drug dealing is apparent. Assistant Chief Constable Catriona Paton said: ‘Our officers will be bound by their legal duty to uphold the law and will not ignore acts of criminality.
‘We also have a duty to respond to the communities in the area surrounding the safer drug consumption facility.’
