MORE drug consumption rooms are needed in Glasgow to “really make a difference” to the number of deaths in the city, a UK Government committee has been told.
Over 140 people have used Scotland’s first safer drug consumption facility — The Thistle — since it opened in January, with more than 700 injecting episodes supervised.
It aims to provide a safe environment for drug users — but Glasgow health chiefs have suggested a “network of facilities” might be needed to reduce the city’s high drug-related death rates.
Changing drug habits mean there is also demand for an inhalation room at the Hunter Street facility where the £2.3m-per-year pilot is running, MPs on the Scottish Affairs committee were told today.
Cllr Allan Casey, city convener for addictions services, said people who inject in public do not use one location. “We need to have a network of facilities working in conjunction with each other to make it as accessible as possible,” he added.
Labour MP Kirsteen Sullivan quizzed the Thistle’s representatives over “conflicting views” as to the aims of the facility, saying it is “really important” to have “clarity around the expectations of whether the Thistle will have a positive impact insofar as reducing drug-related deaths.”
Dr Saket Priyadarshi, associate medical director, alcohol and drug recovery services at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, said international evidence suggested for “the population that uses such a facility there is improved health and reduced mortality rates, including reduced drug related deaths”.
However, he added users of the Thistle are “a relatively small population, even in relation to the population of people who use drugs in Glasgow city”. “For that population, we hope very much that there will be a reduction in drug-related deaths,” he said.
Dr Priyadarshi said “very significant” medical emergencies and overdoses” had already been reversed, which would “almost definitely lead to fatalities outside this service”.
He said it is “very difficult on its own to say that the facility will reduce Glasgow’s figures”, but continued: “I’m very confident that were a number of these facilities to exist, targeted at populations who have the highest rates of harm and drug-related deaths, then you would see a different picture in Glasgow city and nationally as well possibly.”
Sullivan asked whether focusing on a “very, very small population who inject” would make the “biggest difference” given “the change in the drugs environment”.
Dr Priyadarshi said plans for the Thistle initially included a smoking/inhalation room, and they are “very keen” to develop one. He said there has been “some change” to drug trends with more people smoking cocaine, although there is still a lot of injecting too.
Cllr Casey said work must be carried out quickly to make the case for a legal exemption to allow an inhalation room. The facility can be retrofitted to provide a smoking room, he added.
Health chiefs also want to provide a drug checking service, which would help identify dangerous drugs and understand trends in the city.
Cllr Casey said the Thistle was a “small part of the wider package of service we are providing” and is “not a silver bullet”. He added it is “a missing piece of the jigsaw”, but there “does have to be a network of these facilities to really make a difference in terms of those national statistics”.
Sullivan said: “I’m not sure we can really be looking to networks when we are only a few weeks into a pilot. I think we need to see the outcomes before we have further discussion on that.”
Support provided by the team at the Thistle — which opens 365 days a year, from 9am to 9pm — has included blood borne virus testing, accommodation needs and engagement with drug treatment and care. Showers, laundry facilities and access to clean clothes have also been used.
Dr Priyadarshi said people have used the centre as a “touch base to then engage with other treatment and care and support needs”.
