Addicts should be allowed to smoke Class A drugs at a soon-to-open drug room in Scotland, activists have said.
The Scottish Drugs Forum (SDF) has proposed that the ‘safe consumption facility’ in Glasgow, which is already set to allow the injection of drugs, should be expanded to embrace the smoking of crack cocaine and heroin.
Once open, the Scottish Government-endorsed ‘shooting gallery’ will be the first prosecution-free drug zone in the UK.
‘Palliative care’
Kirsten Horsburgh, Chief Executive of the Government quango SDF, criticised the city’s £2.3 million pilot project for failing to have an “inhalation component”.
She claimed, “there’s a lot of people smoking crack cocaine and also smoking heroin that would benefit from that being part of the facility too”.
But Annemarie Ward of drugs charity FAVOR UK said drug rooms just lead “to more substitute prescription drugs.
“If you are not providing services that can help people to get freedom from addiction, then you are simply offering palliative care.”
Decriminalisation
Last year, Scotland’s Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain KC indicated that she is ready to effectively decriminalise the use of hard drugs in the Glasgow clinic.
She denied her proposal amounted to the toleration of criminality and claimed Police Scotland would “retain the ability to effectively police the facility”.
While drugs laws are decided at Westminster, the Scottish Government can set policy on how those laws are applied within the Scottish criminal justice system.
In 2022 – the latest available figures from National Records Scotland – drug-related deaths exceeded a thousand for the fifth year in a row.
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