Community Justice chief: We need to talk about drug consumption rooms

Drug consumption rooms should be trialled across Scotland, according to the head of the country’s community justice programmes.

The UK Government has refused to permit a pilot scheme in Glasgow, which would have allowed addicts to take their own drugs under medical supervision to reduce overdose deaths.

But Karyn McCluskey, chief executive of Community Justice Scotland, said they should be rolled out in Scotland after visiting drug consumption rooms in Copenhagen, one of them the largest in Europe.

Almost 1,200 people in Scotland died from drug misuse in 2018, a 27% increase on the previous year.

She said: “We need to think about how we are going to turn this around because we can’t have this many people dying.

“It is traumatic for families and it has a ripple effect through communities.

“I think we have to try it and have a transparent process. It took Copenhagen two years to really get it right.”

She added: “You can’t just centralise it and have it in the centre of a city and think that is the solution. We have addiction problems all over – Dundee, the Highlands.”

Ms McCluskey, who led the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit tackling the country’s gang culture, visited the H17 drug consumption room in the Danish capital, where up to 24 people at a time can inject or smoke drugs.

Staff test the drugs to show how much they have been cut with chemicals by dealers and also offer medical treatment and screening.