Plans for UK's first facility for safer consumption of illegal drugs approved

Plans for the UK’s first facility for the safer consumption of illegal drugs have been approved – despite the opposition of the government in Westminster.

The proposed pilot facility will be based at Hunter Street Health Centre in Glasgow.

The plans were rubber-stamped by the city’s integrated joint board of council and health officials on Wednesday, subject to the receipt of Scottish government funding.

Holyrood has agreed to make up to £2.3m a year available for the pilot, with staff expected to be hired from next year.

Dr Saket Priyadarshi, associate medical director of Glasgow’s alcohol and drug recovery services, told Sky News the centre will allow people to use drugs in “clean, hygienic environments where they’re supported by trained professional staff who can respond to any problems that arise”.

It comes after Scotland’s top law officer said it “would not be in the public interest” to prosecute users of such facilities for simple possession offences.

Drug laws are reserved for the UK government, but Scotland’s Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain KC sets out the rules on whether prosecutions should take place.

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Westminster has consistently rejected pleas for such a facility, but the Home Office has since said it will not intervene in the Scottish scheme.

Scotland correspondent

There have been five prime ministers, two first ministers, endless debate and more than 7,000 Scottish drug deaths since this idea was first considered in Glasgow.

Scotland has a stubborn addiction to hard drugs spanning generations. Politicians of all colours have failed to properly get a grip of the emergency.

Deaths have spiralled in the past decade – leaving Glasgow with the shameful badge of being Europe’s drugs death epicentre.

This concept of allowing addicts to bring their own heroin to a taxpayer-funded facility and inject it while officials watch is a UK-first. But it’s a regular feature in some other major European cities who have claimed high success rates in saving lives.

Glasgow has looked with envy at other models as it battles a seemingly never-ending war on drugs. It is estimated hundreds of users inject heroin in public places in Glasgow every week.

Experts claim the rooms can be used to persuade addicts to use health services and cut crime by moving users indoors to a safe, controlled environment. Authorities in the city first floated a ‘safer drug consumption room’ in 2016. It failed to get off the ground as it was argued the UK Home Office refused to allow addicts to break the law to feed their habits.

The usual wrangle between Edinburgh and London continued for years with Downing Street suggesting Scotland could, if it wanted, use its discretion to allow these injecting rooms to go ahead.

The biggest milestone was reached several weeks ago when Scotland’s most senior prosecutor issued a landmark decision that it would not be in the public interest to take those using such a facility to court. The Lord Advocate’s ruling paves the way for Glasgow to go ahead with a twelve-hour-a-day operation.

There will be a welcome area where addicts will ‘check in’ before being invited into one of eight bays. The room is clinical, covered in mirrors with a row of small medical bins. A design of the building shows an ‘after care’ area where people will relax after their hit in the company of housing and social workers.

The idea is controversial and not cheap. £2.3m has been ring-fenced every year for pilots in several Scottish cities, depending on the ‘success’ of Glasgow. This is a political decision and comes amid a backdrop of services being slashed in other areas amid squeezed budgets.

The big test will be if deaths decrease and how this will operate alongside the work of law enforcement. It has never been done before on these shores. The law is not being changed but senior police officers say they are taking a “supportive approach”. However, if they insist they are still bound to uphold the law – could this spell trouble?

It seems the political stalemate on the issue is over but no doubt there will be further bumps in the road before this unit is fully up and running, and even when it opens.

Safer drug consumption facilities (SDCFs) are backed by the Scottish government as a way to tackle the country’s drug-related deaths crisis.

A total of 1,051 people died in Scotland due to drug misuse in 2022, according to the National Records of Scotland (NRS).

Although this is a decrease of 279 deaths from 2021 and the lowest level for five years, Scotland still has the worst drug death rate in the UK and the rest of Europe.

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First proposed in 2016, the SDCF will allow people to inject drugs under supervision and aims to reduce the harms associated with drug use in public areas.

A report to the board said: “SDCFs have been shown to reduce public injecting and discarded needles, and remove barriers to, and improve the uptake into, treatment and care.”

The report added that the facility is “likely to polarise opinion”.

Opposing campaigners believe SDCFs could minimise the dangers of drugs and divert vital resources away from treatment-based approaches.

The Home Office has also repeatedly said “there is no safe way to take illegal drugs, which devastate lives, ruin families and damage communities”.

But in response to concerns that the centre could become a “magnet for crime” and drug dealers looking to take advantage of vulnerable people, Dr Priyadarshi said: “The international evidence would suggest that’s unlikely to happen if the service is well managed.”

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Documents presented to the Glasgow City Integration Joint Board said the facility will be open between 9am and 9pm, 365 days a year.

Hunter Street Health Centre currently provides a heroin-assisted treatment service.

The report said the site “offers a discrete base, closely located to the city centre, and implementation of the enhanced drug treatment service within the centre has not caused significant challenges for the community”.

The integration joint board will cover the cost of redesigning the building, creating a reception and injecting section with booths, as well as treatment rooms and a recovery area.

The report said: “The SDCF will be subject to a robust independent evaluation studying the impact on service users, staff, local communities and businesses, and whether anticipated wider societal benefits such as cost reductions in other services are realised.”

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