UK to Open Facility for 'Safe Use' of Illegal Drugs

The UK will open the first official facility for the ‘safe use’ of illegal drugs. It will employ specialists who will provide overdose assistance, The Guardian reports.

The facility will be called Thistle and will be located in Glasgow, in the west of Scotland. It will open in a month.

Plans to create such a facility emerged 10 years ago in response to the outbreak of HIV infection among injecting drug users. However, they were repeatedly blocked by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. They argued that it would contravene the 1971 Drug Abuse Act.

‘Every death from drug abuse is a tragedy for those who have lost their lives, for their families and for society as a whole. While we have no plans to change British law, we will take preventative public health action to tackle society's biggest killers, such as drug misuse, and support people to live longer and healthier lives,’ the government said.

Thistle will allow people to use illegal drugs purchased elsewhere in hygienic conditions and under the supervision of specialists. The latter will provide assistance in case of injury and overdose, as well as offer comprehensive assistance and referrals to other services.

Thistle will be open seven days a week from 9am to 9pm.

Currently, there are more than 100 safe drug consumption sites in the world, and none of them have ever recorded a death.

‘The logic is very simple - injecting in public is dangerous because it is extremely unhygienic and can lead to infection and injury, and in some cases, death. There are also environmental hazards from drug-related waste, such as needles and syringes, being dumped in places where people work and live,’ said Andrew McAuley, Professor of Public Health at Glasgow Caledonian University and consultant to the National Health Service (NHS).

According to him, the most popular injection sites in Glasgow city centre are alleyways, car parks and garbage cans.

Thistle opens amid a drug-related death emergency in Scotland. In 2023, more than 1,100 people died for this reason, almost a quarter of them in Glasgow. This city has been nicknamed the European capital of drug deaths.

Thistle's initiators emphasise that it was developed to ‘meet the needs of a specific community’ - people who are often homeless and use drugs in the city centre. At the same time, other measures are needed to reduce drug-related deaths.

‘We hope that this service will be very effective... but it's not a silver bullet (a metaphor for a solution of extreme efficiency that refers to a folkloric method of killing evil spirits, such as vampires - ed.) We are not relying on a single intervention, but on a whole package of treatment and care,’ said Saket Priyadarshi, deputy medical director for drug and alcohol rehabilitation at the NHS.

According to him, the plan includes crisis outreach services, inpatient rehabilitation and a national programme to distribute naloxone, which is used to reverse the effects of opioid overdose.

According to the WHO, 3.2 million people die every year worldwide due to alcohol and drug use. Most deaths occur among the 20-39 year old age group.