UK’s first safer drug consumption facility offers hope to people – councillor
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The first safe drug consumption room in the UK will “offer hope” to hundreds of people, community leaders have said. The Thistle will open in the east end of Glasgow on Monday at an existing NHS enhanced drug treatment service. Scotland has the highest rate of drugs deaths in Europe, with fatalities rising by 12% in a year to 1,172 drug-related deaths in 2023, of which 246 were in Glasgow.
The £1 million facility will “offer hope” to an estimated 400 to 500 people who inject in public in Glasgow city centre every two weeks, councillor Allan Casey said. Intravenous drug use creates pressure on the NHS, including amputations due to infected injection wounds, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and complex health problems, with potentially critical health issues to be addressed at an earlier stage at The Thistle.
Campaigners lobbied for almost a decade for the facility after HIV infections surged in 2016 due to people injecting drugs but it was blocked by the Home Office until 2024. Mr Casey urged the Home Office to approve a licence for drug testing because “people don’t know what they are taking”, with an explosion in synthetic drugs blamed for the rise in deaths, and after heroin contaminated with anthrax caused 14 deaths in Glasgow in 2009-10.
He said: “There has been a war on drugs in the UK for decades, but nobody is winning it apart from dealers. “There needs to be a public health approach – having a drugs consumption room doesn’t encourage people to take drugs, the most important part is the aftercare.”.
