A network of mobile and fixed-site consumption rooms should be established nationwide, SDF chief executive officer Kirsten Horsburgh told Abbeycare’s Listen Up podcast.
The facilities should be rolled out in any area where the alternative for people was injecting ‘somewhere extremely unsafe’, she said. Edinburgh council recently launched a consultation process to hear the views of local residents on a proposed consumption room, which would be the UK’s second following the opening of Glasgow’s The Thistle last year.
The Thistle’s value was that it was ‘completely non-judgemental’, Horsburgh said. ‘People don’t necessarily for the first time go in and inject drugs – people have been going in to use the showers, or to use the clothing facility, or to just have a chat with staff to suss out what the staff are like and how they’ll be treated. To have that space is invaluable.’
Acknowledging the controversy around the issue and the concerns of local communities, she said she believed that ‘the evidence will speak for itself as the service begins to embed itself more thoroughly – this has been the case internationally, that originally you get a lot of public discontent’.
‘To reduce drug-related deaths, we must continue to focus on harm reduction and also on services that are actively helping people overcome and recover from addiction,’ said Listen Up host and Abbeycare outreach manager Eddie Clarke. ‘At Abbeycare, we fully endorse the necessity of harm reduction interventions as a vital component of care, and use these tools within our own programmes when needed. However, we maintain that abstinence-based recovery is the most robust and safest form of harm reduction available. By providing a clear pathway away from substance use altogether, we empower individuals to eliminate the risks of toxicity and overdose, ultimately fostering the most secure environment for lasting health and personal transformation.’
Listen Up podcast available here
See May’s DDN for a feature on the lessons from consumption room initiatives across Europe