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Welcome to the Thistle – the UK’s first and only drug consumption room. After nearly a decade of deadlock and wrangling over drug laws the centre is finally ready to open. On Monday it will welcome its first clients who will come in to inject illegally-bought heroin or cocaine under medical supervision.
The Thistle is based in Glasgow’s east end, where there is a high population of users who take drugs in public. Funded by the Scottish government, its aim is to reduce overdoses and drug-related harm as well as making drug use less visible to the community.
Drug laws are set at Westminster but are enforced by the Scottish courts. This scheme can only go ahead because Scotland’s senior prosecutor, the Lord Advocate, announced a change in policy which meant users would not be prosecuted for possessing illegal drugs while at the facility.
The UK government said it had no plans to introduce other consumption rooms but it would not interfere in the Glasgow project. Some local residents are against the plan, saying they think it will bring more dealing to the area, and an addictions charity claimed it would “encourage people to harm themselves.”
The Thistle is modelled on more than 100 similar facilities across the world. It will be open between 09:00 and 21:00 and will operate 365 days a year. People who arrive at the centre with drugs have to be registered with the service before they are permitted entry.
Inside, there are eight booths where nursing staff will supervise injections and respond to overdoses. The consumption room will not have the ability to test the drugs being taken, but will provide a safe environment for those using them.
Service manager Lynn Macdonald said staff were still unsure how many injections would take place each day. “Some services similar in size to this in other countries are seeing up to 200 people a day but it’s really difficult to predict,” she said.
The Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain KC said: “This policy is an extension of the principles of diversion from prosecution. That is a process by which the procurator fiscal can refer a case to a local authority, or other identified agency, as a means of addressing underlying causes of offending.
Everybody is using. You go down a street, you’ll see paraphernalia. You go on a corner, you’ll see someone taking drugs, not caring, bold as brass. With this consumption room – I think everyone will use it. But it will be about trust.
Scotland’s drug death crisis is not going away. The number of fatal overdoses steadily rose throughout the 2010s until a record high of 1,339 in 2020. Since then, the numbers have stabilised but remained stubbornly high.
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