You might think it odd that someone who spent over half their adult life sworn to uphold the law would be so delighted with the opening of a facility in Scotland that seems to support criminality. However, regular readers will know that I have spent many years exploring more humane and health-based responses to our worsening drug problems.
Last Monday, The Thistle, a legal Safer Drug Consumption Facility opened in Glasgow. Whilst this is a first for the UK, there are over a hundred such centres operating worldwide.
More commonly known as Drug Consumption Rooms (DCRs), they are supervised healthcare settings where people can inject drugs they obtain elsewhere in clean, hygienic environments. They aim to reduce the negative impact that injecting outdoors brings to residents, communities and businesses, reduce the harms associated with injecting drugs and support people to access help to improve their lives. Evidence indicates they encourage otherwise disengaged drug users into treatment, thereby reducing drug deaths and the spread of infectious diseases.
In 2012, as Brighton and Hove was coming out of a grim period where the city bore the label of being the drugs death capital of the UK, an Independent Drugs Commission was convened, chaired by the then Pavilion MP, Caroline Lucas and author Peter James. In its final report it said there were more than 2,000 heroin and cocaine users in the city who were dependent on one or more drugs, were experiencing health or social problems or were committing crimes related to their drug use. That figure excluded those experiencing problems with other drugs.
Its most high-profile recommendation was for consideration to be given to establishing a DCR in the city. By the time the report was published I had retired and took the opportunity to visit a Drugs Consumption Room in Frankfurt to see what they were all about. That visit spurred a second trip, this time with the BBC to film a documentary asking whether DCRs were the answer for Britain’s, and more specifically Brighton’s, drug problem.
What I saw on those visits will never leave me. From the street, the DCR looked like any healthcare facility. However, once through the door, things were very different. Staffed by scrupulously professional health workers, users were required to book in, show the drugs they intended to take and declare the method by which they would take them. They were provided clean needles and other paraphernalia then waited for a space to administer their drugs. Remember, these have been bought on the street so no one knows what they contain. The centre manager, Wolfgang, would only refer to the substances as ‘poison’ as in his mind the term drug should be reserved for health promoting substances.
The consumption room walls were fully glazed so even staff elsewhere in the centre could monitor users’ welfare. Stainless steel booths lined those walls, occupied by people of all ages and appearances who sat and skilfully prepared their drugs, some scouring their broken bodies for ages searching for a vein. Staff watched closely and more than once I saw them react when a user suffered ill effects. The users remained there as long as they needed during which staff tried to coax them into treatment programmes while providing health advice. Most users came in two or three times a day, so the process of weaning them off the lifestyle and their addiction could be a slow process but the staff never gave up. Despite the human misery within, on both occasions I left the DCR filled with hope.
At the time, given the legal and public policy obstacles, and Brighton and Hove’s problem was not as acute as Frankfurt’s, I felt it was unrealistic to establish a DCR here, even as a pathway
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