By Aaron Masterson

The UK’s first ever drug consumption room, The Thistle, opened in Glasgow on Monday. Based in Hunter Street, this centre aims to provide a safe place for supervised drug use, having been originally planned to provide clean needles for long term addicts. The objective of the centre is to watch over users and is supposed to prevent unhygienic injections, prevent disease and finally, prevent drug-related overdose deaths.

The Drug Consumption Room will allow registered service users to bring their own drugs to the site to inject them under supervision by specialist or well-experienced personnel.

However, the opening has not been without controversy in the UK.

The use of drug consumption rooms has been a hot topic throughout Europe as countries such as Switzerland and Greece have used it to reduce drug harm in the country. Since the introduction of Drug Consumption Rooms to Switzerland in 1986, drug use has been reduced by 64%. This has led to Switzerland having 93 official Drug Consumption Rooms (DCR).

Clearly their use can effectively bring down harmful drug abuse. So, to bring them to Scotland, which is a country with a well-known history of chronic drug misuse, makes it the most sensible approach available.

The priority of using clean needles is an important precaution to take to avoid the spread of Blood Borne Viruses (BBV). These diseases are most often transmitted from either direct or indirect exposure to infected blood.

Some of these diseases include Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C and HIV. In Scotland, around 34,500 people are currently infected with Hep C and 90% of these cases have stemmed from using dirty needles and or from injecting drugs.

According to gov.scot, drug related deaths in Scotland is currently on the rise. From March 2023 to March 2024, there were 1219 suspected drug-related deaths in Scotland, this is a 10% increase from the previous 12 months.

The most common drugs used which resulted in these overdose deaths were heroin, methadone and morphine. This doesn’t come as a shock because in recent years, methadone has been used to treat drug addiction. According to Public Health Scotland (PHO), methadone was prescribed to treat at least 22,087 people for drug addiction.

Men accounted for 73% of suspected drug deaths between January and March of 2024, according to a Scottish Government review. Drug use in recent years, has also become more common in young people (16-24 age group). This group makes up 21% of the drug users in Scotland. Now the question is whether the methods of treatment have been effective enough to warrant this facility?

Prescribing methadone has proven to be a success in reducing drug use according to gov.scot. In 2022, 52% of drug users in Scotland achieved abstinence or a reduction in using. So, the Scottish Government seems to be changing its approach from prescribing drugs to prevent harm to supervising the use of drugs with success to support it.

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Opinions on the subject have ranged widely with people speculating on whether the facility would be beneficial enough for to help.

According to a survey by theconversation.com, the Scottish public felt that the facility was better when driven by helping family members turn their lives around rather than being driven by science and the benefits that it brings.

Another survey conducted by Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU) showed that of 1500 people, 61% of them supported the idea of DCR’s in Scotland, while 15% disagreed and the other 24% were unsure.

Overall, DCRs have been proven as a successful drug reduction method all over Europe, and introducing this in Scotland will allow addicts to get the help they need as well as making the country safer.

UK’s first Drug Consumption Room – changing the face of addiction