Official Report 728KB pdf
Good morning, and a warm welcome to this joint meeting of members of the Health, Social Care and Sport and Social Justice and Social Security Committees to consider the progress that has been made in implementing the recommendations of the Scottish Drug Deaths Taskforce.
We have received apologies from Annie Wells and Pauline McNeill.
I place on the record our thanks to the staff at the Thistle safer drug consumption facility for their kind invitation to visit. Pauline McNeill and Paul Sweeney kindly attended the visit and I invite Paul Sweeney to provide us with some feedback.
Thank you, convener. I second your thanks to the staff of the facility for enabling Pauline McNeill and me to visit on behalf of the committee on 9 January, just prior to it officially opening on 13 January. We were given a comprehensive walk-through of the facility by the staff, and what struck us was how well planned the facility is in terms of how people present at it, how well fitted out it is, and how welcoming and non-clinical the space is.
People can come into a reception area, register and go into a consultation room, then proceed through a small corridor into a large space where they are handed sterile equipment and allocated a booth. They are then able to prepare and inject the substance under supervision at a step back from it at a desk or a nurse’s station. The mirrors were orientated in such a way that they provided some privacy. Nonetheless, if assistance was required, someone could come over and help—not with injecting the substance, but with finding a vein and so on. We went through all that in detail. If someone has an overdose, crash mats and first aid provision are available, and they are taken care of in an adjacent clinical room.
Just behind the administration area, there is an area with soft furnishings where someone who has just injected is able to let the drug take effect. After that, there is more of an informal cafe-type break-out area, almost like a kitchen area, where people can sit and relax and get informal advice from the staff about options around housing, mental health, physical health, social security and so on, to try to ensure that there is a degree of stability. Then, of course, they are able to leave.
There is also an outdoor smoking area although it was stressed that it is only for smoking tobacco. Other substances are not permitted to be smoked on site, although it was discussed that it would make sense to have some form of facility for smoking, because we know that is a characteristic of people who use drugs. Smoking substances is another issue, so why not provide the facility for that? We heard that indoor inhalation would involve significant ventilation requirements and that there might also be issues with the smoking ban. However, the outdoor area is quite well provisioned. Whether that would be a useful adjunct or expansion of the scope of the facility might be something to look at in the future.
People are given orientation information and are free to leave at a reasonable point after the injection of the substance.
All in all, it is a well-provisioned, spacious, well-designed and thoughtful facility that takes street injection behaviour into a controlled environment. There is no scope to leave with any substances and there is no provision of substances on site. Sterile equipment and debris are disposed of on site. People may attend multiple times in a day or more infrequently. It is very much there when it is needed. Some questions were raised about the opening hours, which are from 9 to 9, which is only a 12-hour operating window.
The discussion that the committee had previously was purely about whether it is a starting point and whether we should see how we progress with it. It has now been operating for just over a month and it certainly seems to be performing well so far, although it is in its very early days.
One area of concern that was noted was the potential nervousness of the community about drug-dealing and other associated antisocial behaviour. I was certainly reassured that that would be kept under review as part of the evaluation of the facility.
In our walk-through and discussion on site, we found it to be very impressive, based on my experience of visiting other facilities in the world, particularly in Copenhagen. I found it to be a well-planned facility and thought that the staff presented a comprehensive and effective plan of operations.
Thank you, Paul; that was helpful. It sounds as though it was a worthwhile visit. The facility seems to provide a dignified experience for the service users who come in and use it.
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Decision on Taking Business in Private