Inside the UK’s first legal drug consumption room in Glasgow

Welcome to the Thistle – the UK’s first and solely drug consumption room.

After practically a decade of impasse and wrangling over drug legal guidelines the centre is lastly able to open.

On Monday it’s going to welcome its first purchasers who will are available to inject illegally-bought heroin or cocaine below medical supervision.

The Thistle relies in Glasgow’s east finish, the place there’s a excessive inhabitants of customers who take medication in public.

Funded by the Scottish authorities, its goal is to cut back overdoses and drug-related hurt in addition to making drug use much less seen to the neighborhood.

Drug legal guidelines are set at Westminster however are enforced by the Scottish courts.

This scheme can solely go forward as a result of Scotland’s senior prosecutor, the Lord Advocate, introduced a change in coverage which meant customers wouldn’t be prosecuted for possessing unlawful medication whereas on the facility.

The UK authorities stated it had no plans to introduce different consumption rooms however it will not intervene within the Glasgow undertaking.

Some native residents are towards the plan, saying they assume it’s going to carry extra dealing to the realm, and an addictions charity claimed it will “encourage folks to hurt themselves.”

PJ Scotland Information was given a tour of the ability.

The Thistle is modelled on greater than 100 related amenities the world over.

It will likely be open between 09:00 and 21:00 and can function one year a yr.

Individuals who arrive on the centre with medication must be registered with the service earlier than they’re permitted entry.

Inside, there are eight cubicles the place nursing workers will supervise injections and reply to overdoses.

The consumption room is not going to have the flexibility to check the medication being taken, however will present a protected surroundings for these utilizing them.

Service supervisor Lynn Macdonald stated workers have been nonetheless not sure what number of injections would happen every day.

“Some providers related in measurement to this in different nations are seeing as much as 200 folks a day nevertheless it’s actually tough to foretell,” she stated.

“You should have some individuals who will possibly are available as soon as a day, you will have some individuals who possibly are available twice a day.

“You may possibly have some individuals who are available 10 instances a day relying on their drug use sample.”

The service additionally supplies medical session rooms, a restoration and remark room and a kitchen and lounge space.

Customers may also have entry to a clothes financial institution and showers.

The Thistle’s working prices will attain nearly £7m over the following three years.

It’s located within the metropolis’s Hunter Road beside a clinic the place 23 long-term drug customers are at present prescribed pharmaceutical heroin.

The brand new facility is not going to present medication – customers carry their very own provide.

A earlier report by the NHS estimated there have been “roughly 400 to 500 folks injecting medication in public locations in Glasgow metropolis centre regularly”.

Dr Saket Priyadarshi – head of alcohol and drug restoration providers at NHS Larger Glasgow – is the medical lead for the service.

“We’ve got a focus of websites which are long-standing public injection websites,” he stated.

“We additionally know that within the neighborhood, there’s a focus of individuals concerned in injecting away from residence and who expertise a number of the highest charges of drug-related hurt and fatality in Scotland, if not the UK.

“It is smart to ship at this website, which is the place the issue is.”

Dr Priyadarshi stated he hoped the service would enhance points round drug-related litter and visual public injecting within the native space.

“We aren’t saying that’s going to, in any approach, have an effect on the nationwide drug-related loss of life image, and even the broader metropolis,” he stated.

“We’re targeted on a really concentrated small inhabitants.

“Having stated that, by setting an instance, I do hope that different components of Scotland will contemplate whether or not it’s related for them.”

The consumption room isn’t a brand new idea.

First trialled in Switzerland in 1986, such amenities have since unfold to different European nations together with Denmark, Portugal, the Netherlands, Germany and Spain, in addition to amenities in Canada and New York Metropolis.

Dr Priyadarshi was a part of a assume tank that first proposed establishing a consumption room in Scotland as early as 2008.

Glasgow’s Joint Integration Board – a physique comprising the native NHS and Glasgow Metropolis Council that administers well being and social care providers – first authorised plans for the ability in 2016.

It got here after an HIV outbreak among the many metropolis’s injecting drug customers a yr earlier, the worst the UK had seen for 3 many years.

For the 2016 plan to work, customers wanted to be allowed to carry class-A medicine – purchased from sellers – to an NHS website with out being prosecuted.

Regardless of the proposals being backed by the Scottish authorities, drug legal guidelines are reserved to Westminster.

The Residence Workplace would not back the plan and it was shelved in 2018.

Nevertheless, it was revived when Scotland’s Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain KC said that it will “not be within the public curiosity” to carry proceedings in such circumstances in 2023.

Well being officers have been required to seek the advice of the local people within the close by Calton neighbourhood earlier than last sign-off by the Lord Advocate.

Over the course of a yr, PJ Scotland Information has attended quite a few drop-in conferences between the centre’s workers and native residents searching for details about the scheme.

Some stay unconvinced, citing considerations over potential rises in drug dealing and dysfunction within the neighbourhood.

Others complained about under-investment in one of many poorest areas of town.

Annemarie Ward is the chief govt of the charity Faces and Voices of Restoration UK, which helped draft the Scottish Conservatives’ Proper to Restoration Invoice making its approach by the Scottish Parliament.

She questioned spending priorities and said that the ability was a “misnomer of therapy”.

Ms Ward stated: “It’s a hurt discount intervention, not a therapy.

“It isn’t in any approach revolutionary or progressive to observe somebody hurt themselves so drastically and so catastrophically.”

She stated it was a “travesty and a devastation” that addicts typically haven’t got entry to restoration providers.

Ms Ward added: “Does it cease folks from dying? I do not assume it does. I believe it encourages folks to proceed to hurt themselves.

“I wish to see the cash go into providers that may assist folks get their lives again. “

The Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain KC stated: “This coverage is an extension of the ideas of diversion from prosecution.

“That could be a course of by which the procurator fiscal can refer a case to an area authority, or different recognized company, as a way of addressing underlying causes of offending.

“In diverting circumstances we goal to interrupt cycles of hurt and scale back the influence of crime on communities.”

She stated she was glad that the Glasgow facility might present a approach for assist providers to have interaction with a number of the most susceptible folks in society.

“I perceive that this coverage could also be a supply of hysteria for some who reside and work close to the ability,” she added.

“The coverage may be very slender and doesn’t imply different offending can be tolerated.

“Provide offences usually are not included and Police Scotland will implement these, and different crimes, as they all the time have.”

Julie – not her actual identify – has been utilizing medication for six years and was sleeping tough within the metropolis centre when she spoke to PJ Scotland in December.

“The drug state of affairs in Glasgow is quite a bit more durable and extra severe now,” she stated.

“All people is utilizing. You go down a road, you will see paraphernalia. You go on a nook, you will see somebody taking medication, not caring, daring as brass.

“With this consumption room – I believe everybody will use it. However will probably be about belief.”

David Clark can be on the streets and is attempting to get off medication after a relapse.

He identified the one-mile distance between town’s purchasing district the place some customers congregate and the consumption room.

“Whether it is run proper, it is a good factor,” he stated.

“However when folks purchase medication down right here [in the city centre], they will not wish to stroll away up there [to Hunter Street], will they?

“That is the catch.”

He added: “However my thumbs are up for that sort of stuff if it’s going to save lives.”

Scotland’s drug loss of life disaster isn’t going away.

The variety of deadly overdoses steadily rose all through the 2010s till a document excessive of 1,339 in 2020.

Since then, the numbers have stabilised however remained stubbornly excessive.

Whereas England and Wales noticed document overdose deaths in 2023, the loss of life fee in Scotland for a similar yr was greater than double.

In 2021, the Scottish authorities declared its “nationwide mission” to sort out drug deaths, with £250m funding over 5 years.

This led to a widespread rollout of the overdose prevention drug naloxone, a give attention to enhancing dependancy therapy requirements and pledges to extend locations in residential rehabilitation amenities.

Scottish Well being Secretary Neil Grey has welcomed the centre’s opening.

He stated: “It is completely rooted within the centre of the nationwide mission about decreasing hurt.

“It’s about ensuring individuals are capable of, in a stigma free approach, entry providers and assist. As a result of it is not simply in regards to the safer consumption ingredient.

“It is also in regards to the wraparound and holistic interventions which are accessible as a part of that.”

The UK authorities stated it had “no plans to introduce consumption rooms”.

It added: “We may also proceed to take preventative public well being measures to sort out the most important killers in our society, together with drug misuse, and higher assist folks to reside longer, more healthy lives.”

A spokesperson stated the UK authorities “is not going to intervene with the independence of the Lord Advocate with respect to the pilot drug consumption room in Glasgow”.