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A squalid drug den featuring a tree covered in dirty heroin syringes has been discovered just yards from Scotland’s only ‘safe’ consumption room.
Laying bare the extent of Glasgow‘s substance crisis, a disturbing video showed the drug-taking hotspot in grim detail with needles, spoons and other drug paraphernalia strewn over the ground – and all just round the corner from a popular student accommodation.
Glasgow is home to the UK’s first and only drug consumption facility, The Thistle, less than half a mile from the location of the clip, posted to X on Saturday by Reform councillor Thomas Kerr.
The centre is already open 365 days a year from 9am to 9pm but its operators told MSPs this week that they may have to extend hours as so many addicts are bingeing on cocaine later in the day and evening.
Run jointly by Glasgow City Council and the NHS, The Thistle allows users to inject hard drugs under medical supervision without fear of prosecution.
More than 400 addicts have so far had 5,000 ‘injecting episodes’, with cocaine taken three times as much as heroin. There have also been 60 ‘medical emergencies’ on site.
But it seems drug use is still spilling onto the streets and parks of Scotland’s largest city.
In the video, Mr Kerr, joined by fellow Reform councillor Audrey Dempsey, first claims that SNP councillor Allan Casey SNP accused the pair of scaremongering when they higlighted drug paraphernalia in Calton, in the city’s east end.
A squalid drug den featuring a tree covered in dirty heroin syringes has been discovered just yards from Scotland’s only ‘safe’ consumption room in Glasgow
Laying bare the extent of Glasgow’s substance crisis, the video showed a drug-taking hotspot in grim detail with needles, spoons and other drug paraphernalia strewn over the ground
‘But as you can see this is student accommodation and look at this,’ he says.
The camera pans from a block of student flats towards a tree loaded with syringes like darts lodged on a board.
Speaking with hundreds of pieces of rubbish scattered across the ground, Ms Dempsey adds: ‘To think this is what we are driving people to is just outrageous. It’s worse than outrageous.’
Seemingly criticising The Thistle consumption room, she sayd: ‘This is where the road to recovery comes right in. The right to enable should not count, it should not be a factor in it.
‘And that’s what we’re doing because all this equipment here, the packaging, the boxes, the syringes, the spoons for burning and the naloxone packages. These are all stuff that is given out freely in the safe consumption room.’
Mr Kerr adds: ‘Scotland’s drug crisis is here for everybody to witness. We need to start focussing on recovery as Audrey said, and not driving into despair where they’re sitting taking needles apparently safely down in the Calton, where you can see the state that people have been driven into.
‘This is absolutely scandalous and this is what’s going on in the streets of Glasgow, just around the corner from a so-called safe consumption facility.’
Ms Dempsey says: ‘This is outragous. This makes you physically sick to think this is what we are pushing people into, and it tells you all the more that the Right to Recovery Bill should stand because people have a right to recover from this. They shouldn’t be driven to this, it’s just awful.’
It saw Reform councillors Thomas Kerr and Audrey Dempsey discuss the city’s drug problems at a site just yards away from a student accommodation
The drug den was also less than half a mile from The Thistle drugs consumption room at the NHS Enhanced Drug Treatment Facility in Glasgow (pictured)
The Right to Recovery Bill, if passed, would ‘establish a right in law to treatment for addiction for anyone in who is addicted to either alcohol, or drugs or both’. It is currently at stage one, the committee stage, of the process.
The Daily Mail has approached Cllr Casey for comment.
The Thistle, which opened in January, also stepped up demands for an ‘inhalation space’ for people to smoke crack.
Responding to calls for longer opening hours, Glasgow Tory MSP Annie Wells said: ‘Local residents will be terrified at the prospect of a 24/7 drug room on their doorsteps.
‘The Thistle is making lives a misery for those living near it, with dirty needles and anti-social behaviour plaguing the community.
‘Expanding state-sponsored drug taking is not the answer – that’s why it’s crucial that MSPs back our Right to Recovery Bill which would enshrine in law a right to life-saving rehab.’
SNP drugs policy minister Maree Todd later MSPs she was confident the Thistle had already saved lives.
She said: ‘We’re seeing more smoking than we have before, more inhalation routes, so we just need to remain agile. Things are not static.
‘It’s a challenging situation to stay ahead of, quite a dynamic situation that’s out there.’
Tricia Fort, chair of Calton Community Council, said the Thistle was ‘doing good’, but there were concerns about it drawing drug dealers to the area.
Morrisons security boss Steve Baxter said the chain’s nearby supermarket had seen a 94 per cent drop in dirty needles in its car park since the Thistle opened.