Monday 13th January 2025 is a day that should go down in Scottish history books – the day the doors opened to Scotland’s first official safer drug consumption room (DCR).
Why say ‘official’? Well, as most readers or those interested in drug policy will know, I ran an unsanctioned site in Glasgow for around a year, where nearly 1,000 injections took place.
To begin with, it was a rusty old transit van bought for £2,400 raised via a fundraising page. This is where, right away, I started to realise things would not be straightforward. The first page I started refunded the few initial donations and sent a message to me, while closing the page, saying that a “police authority” had been in touch and the page was asking for money for illegal purposes.
I was not deterred and started fundraising on another platform. We got enough for this old van (pictured below) and that was good enough to begin.
It so happened with the timing that the van was ready at the end of August 2020. I thought it would be a good and symbolic day to begin operating on International Overdose Awareness Day, so on Monday 31st August 2020, I drove this rusty van into Glasgow city centre and said if people who were injecting outside wanted to come in the van to inject, that would be fine – we would provide clean equipment, heat, light and a warm welcome. That was it – nothing more, nothing less.
Of course, as time went on, it came to light that we would provide so much more: protein drinks and bars, new socks, underwear, and, as the Glasgow winter started, heat pads, hats and gloves.
And – really the key and most crucial thing any of these types of sites must provide to work – we provided a little dignity and a space that said ‘we care about you’. People could feel that and everyone who attended was always respectful towards myself and the volunteers.
As December approached, the old transit was up for MOT and it was going to cost more than it was worth, so we scrapped it. As people saw I was serious and actually out delivering a DCR, donations had jumped, so we had enough to buy a second-hand decommissioned ambulance.
This really took the campaign to the next level as it was much more fit for purpose and provided better heat, lighting and storage for all the extras we were now handing out.
It was a nearly a year operating when I had to stop due to personal reasons and burn-out from the media and lack of official support. However, just before we stopped operating, the Scottish Government had said that they would open a site with or without Westminster approval.
I’ve been asked if I think an official facility would be open now if I had not tested the law. To be honest, maybe – but I think not. Someone had to see what action, if any, police would take. When they took none other than a silly obstruction charge, even allowing us to continue operating on that day, the Scottish Government had to force a site through and push the Lord Advocate to give the go-ahead.
What does worry me is the way the Glasgow site is being talked about – as something that will reduce deaths. This was never the reason that a site was even discussed in Glasgow but rather the 2015 HIV outbreak in the community of people injecting drugs outside, where by the end of 2019 over 150 cases of HIV had been detected.
When I say that the DCR will not reduce deaths, I am talking about the overall picture across Scotland. Even within the 400 to 500 people who are estimated to inject outside, deaths were not high. We were not finding dead bodies in the street. Most often, people would be in twos or threes using, so therefore if someone went over, either an ambulance would be called or Naloxone administered by someone at the site of the overdose.
Again, to be clear, the reason Glasgow first called for a site, and one of the main reasons I started, was HIV transmissions. My job was testing people while knowing they would be back at risk within short periods of time. As I began to deliver, the other main reason to continue was providing that little bit of dignity to people – often a feeling for some that they had experienced for the first time.
I think those in power need to be very careful how they discuss positive outcomes, as it could be very hard to justify the spending of £2.3 million for this site if deaths rates don’t decrease over the next few years, which I am afraid to say I think it very unlikely they will.
Unfortunately, what we are seeing is the drug supply becoming more and more toxic and dangerous. The situation around the world is changing and heroin in the UK will, I believe, be replaced by synthetic-type drugs. We are already seeing a drug in the market called nitazenes, which is a very potent synthetic – even stronger than fentanyl, which has caused so much devastation across North America in the last decade – appear in samples tested via the Welsh project Wedinos in drugs in all parts of the UK.
“We are already seeing a drug in the market called nitazenes, which is a very potent synthetic – even stronger than fentanyl, which has caused so much devastation across North America in the last decade – appear in samples… in all parts of the UK.”
This has to take priority. Former FM Nicola Sturgeon promised the wider roll-out of heroin-assisted treatment (HAT) at the start of 2021 in a statement to the Scottish Parliament, but similar to how long we waited for the opening of the official DCR, we are now over four years down the line and we still only have HAT available to a very small amount of people in Glasgow.
If we really want to see drug deaths decrease, safer supply and offering people a chance to move away from the illicit market needs to be front and centre.
A number of key things need to happen. First is quick, easy access to street drug alternatives; this includes diamorphine (heroin) treatment, low threshold accommodation where people are allowed to use but also monitored, and less risk-averse prescribing, so people who are needing higher levels of benzodiazepine are given enough so that they don’t have to go to the street market, which is super toxic and unpredictable.
Scotland needs to stop over-complicating things. Highly medicalised DCRs, heroin treatment and barriers to accessing treatment, with multiple points of contact before being able to get onto a prescription, are the key factors in our already highest drug deaths rates in Europe.
We need to keep people safe, allow and monitor drug use, and when and where people indicate they want to reduce or stop, make sure it is driven by them and not forced onto them by those who often still today see drug users as bad people – ‘drugs bad, therefore people who use them are bad’.
What we are seeing and hearing from Scottish police since the opening of the Glasgow DCR is alarming. Scotland should take this opportunity to implement less persecution.
While decriminalisation may still lay at the feet of the UK government’s Home Office, with policing and crime fully devolved, let’s step back, stop beating people down further and allow people to step forward and get support that’s often wanted but seen as unattainable due to the archaic laws designed to punish rather than support those with dependency issues.
We are far from seeing Scotland’s drug deaths reducing and staying lower consistently. It is sad that we have to witness such devastation year after year, and for me I am consistently reminded by my own memories of family and friends who are no longer here.
I honestly hope the Scottish Government take the action needed, but with broken promises that treatments would be available that are still not accessible years down the line, I am not full of hope.
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