First drug consumption facility in the UK set to open in Glasgow

The UK’s first drug consumption facility will open in Glasgow in October, it has been confirmed. 

The safer drugs consumption facility will provide spaces for up to eight people to consume drugs under medical supervision. The facility, which will open on 21 October on Hunter Street, will also provide space for up to 30 people to use the other services on offer. 

The opening of the facility comes after a report from the National Records of Scotland outlining how drug-related deaths in the country have risen in the past year. The report showed that 1,172 people lost their lives to drugs in 2023, an increase of 121 from the year before.  

The figures represent is a fourfold increase from 2000, even though the numbers represent the second lowest number of deaths in the last six years.  

“I don’t think we’re under any illusions that a safe injecting facility will be a silver bullet,” said Allan Casey, Glasgow City Council's convener for homelessness and addiction in an interview with STV News. “But it’s a huge step forward that's been a missing piece in our jigsaw in terms of what we are able to provide in a wide range of alcohol and drug services.” 

The project was given the go-ahead by the lord advocate last year, who said it would not be in the public interest to prosecute users of the drug consumption rooms for simple possession offences. This gives drug users the freedom to take illegal substances like heroin without fear of being arrested by police for possessing the substance in the facility.  

“This service will be a part of a wider system of care,” said Dr Saket Priyadarshi, the medical director for alcohol and drug recovery services across NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. “But this service is particularly focused on a group of people in Glasgow city centre and the east end of Glasgow city centre who experience some of the highest rates of drug-related death and drug-related harms.” 

First Minister John Swinney, speaking to journalists at the Edinburgh Cancer Centre at the Western General Hospital, said that the government was working to “strengthen our response to the drug deaths crisis.” Swinney said there is a “deep problem in Scotland with drugs deaths” but the issue is at “the heart of the government’s agenda.” 

The Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross has said the rise in drug deaths is “shocking and shameful.” Ross said that Scotland’s drug death rate is the worst in Europe and that the “SNP’s approach is simply not working.” 

Drug-consumption facilities were first opened in Europe in the 1990s, with schemes in Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands. The world's largest drug-consumption facility, called H17, is based in Copenhagen. H17 has been open since 2016 and has an intake of between 500 and 600 people every day, who come to inject or smoke heroin and cocaine. 

The Safer Drugs Consumption Facility has a budget of £2.3m a year and forms a part of the Scottish Government’s response to the drugs crisis that claims more lives in relation to the population than anywhere else in Europe.