First safe drug consumption room in UK will open this month

The UK’s first safe drug consumption room will open in Glasgow this month.

Known as Thistle, the Hunter Street facility will be open all year round, from 9am to 9pm, from January 15.

Inside, people will be able to consume illegal drugs – like heroin and cocaine – under the supervision of clinicians.

Councillor Allan Casey, convener for addiction services at Glasgow City Council, said: ‘We have been pushing for a safer drug consumption facility for some time.

‘It’s a welcome relief to know we can finally have people in to access the service and support available within the Thistle.

‘We know from all the other safer drug consumption rooms in operation across the world that they do make a difference.’

The hope is this will reduce overdoses other health complications, along with public drug taking and drug-related litter, in a part of the UK with a higher rate of drug-related than other European countries.

Scotland saw a 12% increase in drug misuse deaths in 2023, bringing that year’s total to 1,172. That was the second lowest number since 2017.

Thistle has been nearly a decade in the making. Such a space was proposed in 2016 after a spike in HIV infections in Glasgow, where most then 10% of people injecting drugs have HIV.

A previous outbreak in Edinburgh, when the virus first appeared in the 1980s, led to the introduction of needle exchanges that reduced transmission by taking contaminated needles out of use.

Now experts and policymakers are looking to another harm reduction method – supervised drug taking.

Speaking in 2020, John Campbell, who leads the NHS’s needle exchange scheme in Glasgow said: If this would have been implemented 20 years ago … this outbreak would not have happened or would have been under control much faster.’

Thistle’s location in the same building as a current drug treatment facility is no coincidence.

Harm reduction policies don’t just aim to reduce overdoses and disease transmission.

The hope is that positive interactions with health professionals will open to door to people seeking treatment for their addictions in a way experts fear interactions with police do not.

In 2023, Scotland’s Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain KC announced it would not be ‘in the public interest’ to prosecute people using such a facility.

But Thistle’s launch has not been without controversy. Initially due to be opened last year, it was pushed back by checks on the water and ventilation systems.

In 2020, former heroin addict Peter Krykant was arrested and charged after police attended a volunteer-run drug consumption van in Glasgow. The charge was later dropped.

The UK government under the Conservatives previously opposed the plans to legalise such facilities, both in Scotland and the UK.

However, it allowed Scotland to open Thistle after Bain’s intervention.

Now the Labour government is taking a different approach.

Health Secretary Neil Gray said: ‘I welcome the opening of the UK’s first Safer Drug Consumption facility which the Scottish Government is providing £2.3 million for, as evidence from over 100 facilities worldwide tells us it will save lives.

‘The facility forms part of our five-year, £250 million National Mission to address the drugs deaths emergency, which includes a range of other actions such as a target of 1,000 funded residential rehabilitation places, working towards the establishment of drug-checking facilities and widening access to life-saving naloxone.’

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