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 in to inject illegally-bought heroin or cocaine underneath medical supervision.

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

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

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 medicine 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 venture.

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

BBC Scotland Information was given a tour of the ability.

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

It is going to be open between 09:00 and 21:00 and can function three hundred and sixty five days a 12 months.

Individuals who arrive on the centre with medicine need to be registered with the service earlier than they’re permitted entry.

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

The consumption room is not going to have the power to check the medicine being taken, however will present a secure setting for these utilizing them.

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

“Some providers comparable in dimension to this in different nations are seeing as much as 200 folks a day but it surely’s actually tough to foretell,” she stated.

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

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

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

Customers may even 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 Avenue beside a clinic the place 23 long-term drug customers are at the moment prescribed pharmaceutical heroin.

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

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

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

“We’ve a focus of web sites which can be 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 dwelling and who expertise among the highest charges of drug-related hurt and fatality in Scotland, if not the UK.

“It is smart to ship at this web site, 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’re not saying that’s going to, in any manner, 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 take into account 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 suppose 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 accepted plans for the ability in 2016.

It got here after an HIV outbreak among the many metropolis’s injecting drug customers a 12 months earlier, the worst the UK had seen for 3 a long time.

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

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

The Dwelling Workplace wouldn’t again 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 had been required to seek the advice of the local people within the close by Calton neighbourhood earlier than closing sign-off by the Lord Advocate.

Over the course of a 12 months, BBC Scotland Information has attended quite a few drop-in conferences between the centre’s employees and native residents on the lookout 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 government of the charity Faces and Voices of Restoration UK, which helped draft the Scottish Conservatives’ Proper to Restoration Invoice making its manner by way of 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 manner 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 suppose it does. I believe it encourages folks to proceed to hurt themselves.

“I want 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 rules of diversion from prosecution.

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

“In diverting circumstances we purpose to interrupt cycles of hurt and cut back the impression of crime on communities.”

She stated she was glad that the Glasgow facility might present a manner for assist providers to have interaction with among the most weak folks in society.

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

“The coverage could be very slender and doesn’t imply different offending might be tolerated.

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

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

“The drug state of affairs in Glasgow is so much tougher and extra critical now,” she stated.

“Everyone is utilizing. You go down a road, you may see paraphernalia. You go on a nook, you may see somebody taking medicine, not caring, daring as brass.

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

David Clark can be on the streets and is making an attempt to get off medicine 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 medicine 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 form 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 charge in Scotland for a similar 12 months 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 bettering habit 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 persons are in a position to, in a stigma free manner, entry providers and assist. As a result of it isn’t simply in regards to the safer consumption ingredient.

“It is also in regards to the wraparound and holistic interventions which can be out there as a part of that.”

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

It added: “We may even 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 stay 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”.