SCOTTISH drug charities are calling for urgent action to help those in need after a major legal setback to plans for the UK's first “fix room”.
Last week, Lord Advocate James Wolffe chose to decline to issue guidance on the legality of a drug consumption room.
The Glasgow facility, which would have been the first of its kind in the UK, would allow users a safe space to take drugs, reducing the risks of spreading disease through dirty needles and preventing overdose deaths.
They would also have let high-risk drug users connect with addiction treatment and other health and social services.
Wolffe said it was up to the NHS to decide if it is in the public interest.
READ MORE: Impasse over drugs policy means more people are dying
This, in effect, killed the plan stone dead, because users taking their own drugs into the facility would be committing a criminal offence.
Even if police informally agreed to look the other way, if there was a complaint or if a drug user who had been at the consumption room died, then they would have a responsibility to investigate.
David Liddell, CEO of the Scottish Drugs Forum, said the news was “hugely depressing”.
He said: “It means that a drug consumption room cannot be delivered in a timescale that will respond to the pressing needs of a group who are among the most vulnerable in our society.”
“One of the benefits of this service would have been to help contain Glasgow’s HIV outbreak. We have spent a year awaiting this decision. We should redouble our efforts and deliver heroin-assisted treatment now to this population. There are no legal barriers to this provision.
“Scotland faces significant problems: 61,500 people with drug problems, the highest in Europe per head of population; 867 fatal overdose deaths in 2016, again the highest in Europe per head of population.
“There are continuing outbreaks of infection among drug injectors – the most recent being 105 cases of HIV in an ongoing outbreak in Glasgow.
“We also need a wider vision of how we reach out to Scotland’s most vulnerable people and help them address the significant health and social challenges they face.”
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