The UK's first drug consumption room 'The Thistle' opens in Glasgow's East End.
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00:00Dr Saket Priyadarshi, I'm the Associate Medical Director for Alcohol and Drug Recovery Services
00:24in Greater Glasgow and Clyde.
00:26We're very excited. It's wonderful to know that we'll be able to offer this space very soon as an alternative to people who currently have to inject in outdoor spaces, in car parks, alleyways, lanes and bin areas.
00:42We're going to be able to offer a hygienic, very clean, well-lit, warm environment with well-trained staff who are there to support them and provide a range of other services for people if that's what they want.
00:55So this service is targeted particularly at a discrete population of people who are involved in injecting away from home or sometimes alone in their own private spaces in the Glasgow city centre and the east end of Glasgow.
01:10We hope that by engaging as many of this population as possible, and we think there may be four to five hundred such individuals in the vicinity of this facility, that we can improve public health outcomes for the city but also improve the health circumstances for those individuals and hopefully save lives as well.
01:35Because what we're able to do here is respond to people when they have emergencies, including overdoses with drugs, whereas in public places or alone in the room there wouldn't be that response available.
01:51By keeping people alive, by improving their health, by giving them an opportunity to feel that there's a sense of dignity, hope, a positivity about the future, we hope that that will help them then move on to engage with a range of other recovery opportunities.
02:09One of the really positive things about doing the visits that we've been doing recently is that feedback that we've been getting from all our visitors that this is a very unique space, it's a very soft, gentle, welcoming environment, it's not often what they expected.
02:25And we've spent a lot of time thinking about that, we've looked at the international examples of drug consumption rooms, we've looked at the international literature, we've taken a trauma and psychological informed approach as well.
02:39But crucially we've spoken to people with lived experience of drug use and we've asked them what sort of environment would work in terms of being welcoming, where people felt safe, where people felt that they weren't being judged and stigmatised.
02:56And really from that, the colours that we've used, the calming colours that we've used, the soft furnishings that we've used, even the language in terms of chat rooms and health rooms rather than interview rooms and examination rooms, changes the feel of the setting.
03:18So that we hope it will be more welcoming and a place where people will feel more at ease once they come here.
03:28The statement of prosecution policy also allows for people to bring their drugs into this environment without fear of prosecution.
03:37So although we have been promoting this, we are absolutely realistic that it will take some time for people to feel that they can trust and use this service safely.
03:50Of course they'll be early adapters and our reputation will be really important, so we need to make sure that people who come to this service early doors get a good experience and that they spread the word on the street.
04:06We know that the drug trends in Glasgow City over the last 10 years have moved significantly towards increased use of cocaine, often in crack cocaine form as well, and people are inhaling and smoking their drugs.
04:21So it would be really beneficial to be able to offer a smoking and inhalation facility as part of this service and we hope that that can be realised in the near future.
04:36That's very important also for us to support people to move in a route transition process away from injecting drug use, which is the most harmful way of using drugs, into perhaps inhaling or smoking their drugs, which is going to do less harm and is less likely to cause overdoses.
04:59So of course we're not saying that any form of drug use is safe, they're just safer ways to use those drugs.
05:08We want to offer a comprehensive range of services, evidence based and based on what's best practice elsewhere in the world, and one of those things absolutely is drug testing facilities.
05:21We hope to have a drug testing facility on this site, separate from the service but available to people who use the service, as part of a range of services that are actually located here.
05:34So one of the advantages of delivering this service here is that I'm a very short walk in this building, distance away from blood borne virus nurses, mental health support, sexual reproductive health support and other relevant support such as housing officers who I work with just down the corridor here.
05:56So by offering a range of services and a more holistic response to people's needs, we can hopefully not just reduce harms but improve their chances of improving their quality of life.
06:09We've had a lot of interest from a whole range of cities across the United Kingdom, not just Scotland, about how we've got to where we have so far and how we want to share learning in the future, which we will do and we're very keen to do that.
06:25And we're absolutely aware that other cities in the United Kingdom have similar populations, maybe not to the same numbers and extent that Glasgow does, but they're trying to find ways to tackle similar problems that they have.
06:39So I think services like this are relevant to them as well.
06:44Do they need to wait for us to do our evaluation?
06:49Well actually there's a whole international literature around such facilities all across the world that we've certainly lent on.
06:57We've been speaking to services across the world and leaning on their experience and expertise.
07:04So I think there's enough international literature to support the development of further services like this in the United Kingdom where they're needed.
07:14But we are aware that we've gone first.
07:18We're very proud to do so but that does come with some weight of responsibility on our shoulders and we want to be able to demonstrate the effectiveness of this and the safety of this to the United Kingdom
07:33and to other cities so that they can absolutely take that learning and take it further where they are.