UK’s first drug ‘shooting gallery’ opens

Drug users can now inject without being challenged by police at the UK’s first drug consumption room.

The Thistle, a Scottish Government-funded facility in Glasgow, is open seven days a week and has effectively been declared a ‘prosecution-free drug zone’ by the Lord Advocate.

Latest figures from the National Records of Scotland show that 1,172 people died of drug misuse in 2023, a rise of 121 deaths on the previous year. More than 1,500 babies in Scotland have been born dependent on drugs since 2017.

Supervised overdoses

During a visit to the Thistle, First Minister John Swinney claimed it would enable users to inject in a “safer” environment, although centre manager Lynn MacDonald admitted that “people will overdose in this building”.

Councillor Allan Casey, Glasgow’s convener for addiction services, is already backing calls to also allow drug users to smoke Class A drugs at the facility.

Scottish Health Secretary Neil Gray claimed that he expected drug consumption rooms to be rolled out across the UK if the pilot project costing £2.3 million is deemed to be a success.

Decriminalisation

In 2023, Scotland’s Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain KC indicated that she was ready to effectively decriminalise the use of hard drugs in the Glasgow clinic.

She denied her proposal amounted to the toleration of criminality and claimed Police Scotland would “retain the ability to effectively police the facility”.

While drugs laws are decided at Westminster, the Scottish Government can set policy on how those laws are applied within the Scottish criminal justice system.

Wrong answer

The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) recently called for a halt to the slide towards decriminalisation, citing alarming death figures.

The think-tank’s new report, ‘Still ambitious for recovery: How to address illegal drug addiction and strengthen law enforcement’s role’, revealed that three times as many people die from drug-related reasons as road accidents.

The report also highlighted that a record 5,448 people died from drug poisoning in 2023, an 84 per cent increase since 2013. Almost ten per cent of adults aged 15-59 reported using illegal drugs in the past year, although the think-tank noted that this is likely to underestimate the scale of the problem.

Sophia Worringer, the CSJ’s Deputy Policy Director, said: “Pretending liberalisation is the answer is plainly wrong. Everywhere you look, it has not stamped out the illegal drug market or acted as a silver bullet to reduce drug deaths or drug use.”