Drug Consumption Rooms

Paul Sweeney Excerpts

Wednesday 17th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you, Ms Ryan, for your agile and dynamic chairing of this debate, and congratulations to the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) on securing it. It is on a vital issue that we need to address in this House.

The Glasgow safer drug consumption facility and heroin-assisted treatment pilot project were initially advocated by the Labour administration on Glasgow City Council. It was led by Councillor Matt Kerr, who was convenor of social work at the time, acting on a recommendation from the Glasgow City Alcohol and Drug Partnership that it was a worthwhile and heavily evidenced method to improve the safety and hygiene of intravenous drug use in the city. Indeed, it received cross-party support and benefited from wide support, including that of the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), who at the time was serving on Glasgow City Council.

As many Members may be aware, the issue of drug use and drug-related mortality in Glasgow is particularly acute, and it is a problem that necessitates radical and disruptive new approaches. Almost a third—267—of all Scotland’s drug deaths in 2016 occurred within the Greater Glasgow and Clyde NHS health board area. Per 1 million people, there are 283 drug-related deaths in Glasgow, but the average across the EU is just 20. That means that Glasgow’s drug death rate is an appalling 1,315% higher than the EU average and 329% higher than in England and Wales.

Last year, 1,707 people died in the UK from a heroin overdose, yet no one has died from an overdose in a supervised drug consumption room anywhere in the world at any time. That is due to both the hygienic environment and medical supervision, as well as the readily available supply of life-saving overdose drugs, such as naloxone.

According to the most recent estimates, around 13,600 people aged between 15 and 64 in the Glasgow City Council area are problematic drug users. That represents 3% of the population, which is the highest prevalence rate of all local authorities in Scotland and significantly higher than the Scottish average of 1.75%.

In my constituency of Glasgow North East, there are particularly high levels of drug use in Possilpark and Springburn, which are two of the most economically deprived areas of the constituency following eight long years of brutal austerity. That serves only to drive up levels of despair and alienation in these communities, which is one of the main reasons why people fall into the pernicious trap of hard drug addiction. These areas have also been plagued by the brutal organised crime war between rival factions seeking to control the supply of drugs in the city.

Drug consumption rooms offer hope in this otherwise bleak landscape of despair. They are used as an effective public health measure in the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Norway, France, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Canada and Australia, with 90 facilities currently operating in 61 cities.

It is clear that drug consumption rooms are a worthwhile and practical measure to introduce to Glasgow. They benefit society, for example by reducing drug-related litter and needle-stick injuries, reducing the spread of disease and making our streets safer, as well as having significant health benefits for those who use drugs. Drug consumption rooms significantly reduce fatal overdoses and the needle-sharing that can lead to infections, including HIV and hepatitis, by providing people with sterile equipment. They have also been shown to increase the number of people entering treatment programmes.

Use of a safe space provides the opportunity to start engaging people and to build up trusting relationships with appropriate professionals, which supports them to take those first steps towards dealing with their addictions. The benefits of DCRs have already been demonstrated elsewhere, yet attempts to set up the UK’s first DCR have been blocked. That is despite the idea being supported by the British Medical Association.

That decision is typical of a Government who take little heed of scientific evidence of what works and what saves lives. This is primarily a question of public health, as has been said before, and not one of criminal justice. I therefore urge the Government to adopt an open-minded approach, heed the consensus of all relevant parties and expert bodies in Glasgow, and reconsider amending the obsolete Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 to permit the piloting of the safe drug consumption facility in Glasgow. That will allow them to assess the opportunity that that facility may bring to mitigate and solve the extensive harms caused by the unregulated and unsafe drug consumption environment in my city.