It will take several years for the full health impact of the UK’s first safer drugs consumption room in Glasgow to be understood, MPs have been told.
A group of experts giving evidence to Westminster’s Scottish Affairs Committee said international evidence suggests that local areas will see benefits from the centre.
Drug users can take illegal drugs such as heroin and cocaine under medical supervision at The Thistle Centre. It opened in January.
Glasgow University Professor Vittal Katikireddi told MPs the level of useand the kind of people using the room can be measured “fairly quickly”.
Katikireddi said: “In terms of actually tracking things through to the amount of overdoses, ambulance call-outs, these kind of measures you can view as harder health outcomes – that can often take some time and it depends a bit on how big the service is…
“That will probably take more in the order of two or three years to develop that type of evidence. But potentially longer than that in terms of it being peer-reviewed and published and so on.”
He said similar schemes around the world had tended to see improvements in anti-social behaviour in local communities.
The pilot scheme in the city’s east end is designed to reduce public drug use and help tackle Scotland’s drug deaths rate, which is the worst in Europe.
The Lord Advocate, Scotland’s top prosecutor, has anticipated it will operate as a pilot and there will be a “careful and rigorous evaluation of the facility and its effects”.
Dorothy Bain KC made clear in 2023 that prosecuting the users of such a facility for simple drugs possession charges would “not be in the public interest”, but stressed it is not her role to “sign off” on the centre.
An interim report will be published two-and-a-half years after the opening of the service, with an overall evaluation after four-and-a-half years. The committee was told there are about 200 facilities in 19 countries, including the UK and Ireland.
Glasgow Caledonian University Professor Andrew McAuley said other safer consumption room schemes have resulted in a reduction of drug-related litter such as needles.
He said using more than one type of drug is particularly prevalent in Scotland and cocaine is a notable feature in drug data. Prof McAuley said: “Cocaine for example, has radically changed the whole landscape in Scotland.
“Moving from more of a so-called recreational drug to much more into the street drug scene, being injected by huge amounts of people – people who would traditionally be using opioids such as heroin have largely shifted towards the cocaine market.”
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