In context: Glasgow's safer drug consumption room

What is it?

The facility, located on Hunter Street in Glasgow, will allow people to consume illegal drugs such as heroin under medical supervision. It is hoped the initiative will cut down on drug-related deaths and reduce the impact that injecting outdoors has on the local community by providing a hygienic environment for substance use and connecting addicts to routes into recovery.

The facility, called The Thistle, will be the first of its kind in the UK, and will be open from 9AM until 9PM, all year round.

With a budget of £2.3m a year, it forms part of the Scottish Government’s response to the country’s drug crisis, which takes proportionally more lives than anywhere else in Europe. Last year, 1,172 people died due to substance misuse, a 12 per cent increase compared to the year prior. 

Why was the trial delayed?

Initially the facility was set to open its doors on 21 October last year, but the date was pushed back after the project failed to pass a three-stage testing programme.

Councillor Allan Casey, the convener for addiction services at Glasgow City Council, said “red tape” around the water supply had caused the delay.

How did we get here?

The idea of introducing a trial project dates back to 2002, when the Home Affairs Select Committee recommended that “safe injecting houses” should be piloted without delay.
Since then the trial has caused division across the UK, with the Scottish Government being continuously at odds with Westminster.

And as drugs policy is a reserved matter, progress on the project has been slow.
In 2016 the debate gained momentum again following an HIV outbreak among drug users in Glasgow. However, the plans were rejected due to the need for police to ignore users carrying illegal drugs to the facility in order for it to work. Then Lord Advocate James Wolffe said the issue was a matter of public health rather than of justice. 

In 2022, Labour MSP Paul Sweeney also tried to push forward the project when he lodged the Proposed Drugs Death Prevention (Scotland) Bill in the Scottish Parliament – which would have seen MSPs vote on the roll-out of the centres – but it failed to move past the proposal stage.

Other attempts have also been blocked by the prior UK Conservative government, which claimed the project would be at odds with the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act. 

It was not until August 2023 that the campaign reached a significant turning point when the Home Affairs Committee recommended UK ministers support the pilot scheme in Glasgow. Members of the committee also called for drug laws to be devolved to the Scottish Government if the UK Government remained unwilling to support the project.

Although the recommendations were rejected by the Home Office, two weeks later Scotland’s Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain decided it would “not be in the public interest” to prosecute those using the facility for possessing illegal drugs, giving the facility the go ahead. 

And shortly after, the then Scottish secretary Alister Jack confirmed the UK Government would not block the project. 

Last week the Lord Advocate confirmed possession offences committed within the facility will remain a criminal offence, yet re-iterated it would not be in the public interest for users to be prosecuted for this. However, she said this prosecution policy would not extend to people on their way to and from the facility.

Do any other countries have these facilities?

Yes. The first safer drug consumption room opened in Switzerland in 1986, and since then the practice has been adopted across European countries including Germany and the Netherlands. 

In 2023, Holyrood visited the Danish facility H17, the world’s biggest drug consumption room. With an intake of between 500 to 600 people a day, Copenhagen’s social mayor Karina Vestergård Madsen told the magazine there had been “not a single death when drug use took place in a drug consumption room”. 

So why are some people against them?

Some believe the facility sends the wrong message to people that drug use is acceptable.
In 2023, when he said the UK Government would not intervene in the project, Alister Jack said the rooms “are not the easy solution that honourable members may think” and that there is “no safe way to take illegal drugs”.

Recovery campaigner Annemarie Ward, of Favor UK, said the room “tacitly endorses the use of hard drugs” and described it as “an admission, justification and poor defence of a failed system that doesn’t know how to help people get clean and recover”.

Others, including Tory MSP Annie Wells, believe the rooms will not act as a “silver bullet” for the drug crisis, and have instead urged the Scottish Government to back the Right to Addiction Recovery (Scotland) Bill, which would give drug users the right to access the treatment they require. 

What’s next?

The Glasgow facility is set to open on 13 January.