Volkswacht Bodensee - Scots leader hails opening of UK's first drug consumption facility

The pilot facility in Glasgow -- backed by a £2 million ($2.5 million) Scottish government grant -- will allow users to take their own drugs in a clean environment under medical supervision.

It aims to reduce harms associated with injecting drugs, including the risk from blood-borne viruses such as HIV, as Scotland grapples with the highest drug misuse death rates in Europe.

The devolved government in Edinburgh, led by Swinney's Scottish National Party, also hopes to help drug users improve their lives at the centre and reduce the wider negative impacts of them injecting in public places.

"While this facility is not a silver bullet, it is another significant step forward and will complement other efforts to reduce harms and deaths," First Minister Swinney said Friday as he toured the location.

He noted people "with lived experience" of the issue were involved in designing the service and recruiting staff.

Opening Monday in Glasgow's East End -- a hotspot for deprivation and drug use -- it follows years of political legal wrangling between the parliaments in London and Edinburgh.

Conservative ministers in Westminster, who have responsibility for UK-wide illegal drugs laws, opposed the long-mooted plans during the Tories' 14 years in office.

- 'Public interest' -

But the Scottish government, responsible for devolved health policy, was able to press ahead after the nation's most senior law officer declared in 2023 that prosecuting people using such a facility would not be "in the public interest".

The centre-left Labour party, in power across the UK since July, appears to be more sympathetic with the policy.

An interior minister told MPs in August it "will not interfere with" the consumption room trial and "consider any evidence emerging from evaluation" of it.

Scotland's drug-related death rates have soared over recent years, in part as decades of abuse by the so-called "Trainspotting generation" finally take their toll.

The blockbuster success of the film "Trainspotting", based on Irvine Welsh's novel about coming of age in the 1980s in the Leith area north of Edinburgh, made Scotland's drug underworld famous worldwide.

There were 1,172 deaths by drug misuse registered in 2023, up 12 percent on the previous year but the second lowest number in the last six years, according to official Scottish statistics.

The rate is nearly three times higher than in England and Northern Ireland and around nine times levels across the European Union.

Opioid drugs such as heroin and methadone were implicated in 80 percent of Scotland's 2023 drug-related deaths, while super-strong synthetic opioids such as nitazenes were also a growing threat, according to the data.

Glasgow, Scotland's biggest city, and Dundee had the highest death rates.

T.Zimmermann--VB