‘Clean fix rooms’ not ruled out
●
HEALTH chiefs say clean fix rooms for heroin addicts are not being actively considered but have not been ruled out in Halton.
Sarah Johnson Griffiths, public health consultant for Halton Borough Council, said drug and alcohol recovery contractor Change, Grow, Live (CGL) already offers ‘rapid and open access’ to assessment and treatment services including opiate replacement prescribing and a needle exchange programme to minimise harm.
She said the local authority will review the evidence of how effective such schemes turn out elsewhere.
Dr Prun Bijral, CGL medical director, said safer consumption rooms offer an ‘evidence-based’ way to provide health services to some of the hardest-to-reach heroin users’ and added that the organisation would be ‘open’ to working with its commissioning bodies on such a scheme.
He said that they were established in parts of Europe.
The two organisations’ views were sought after similar schemes were broached in Durham and Glasgow.
The Mail On Sunday revealed at the start of March that Durham Constabulary was planning to fund free medical grade heroin and provide ‘shooting galleries’ for users to inject under medical supervision in a bid to cut crime.
The newspaper reported that critics had said it ‘wasn’t the place of police to provide illegal drugs’, the scheme would cost too much and that fix rooms would attract users, but that Durham’s chief constable and police and crime commissioner both supported the initiative, with Chief Constable Mike Barton arguing that the ‘police were set up to prevent crime, not to arrest people’.
Durham’s plan was revealed just months after civic leaders in Glasgow backed a similar scheme following a rise in HIV diagnoses among injecting drug users.
Fix rooms and free heroin do, however, have some precedent in Halton though, dating back to the radical initia- tive by psychiatrist Dr John Marks, whose Chapel Street Clinic prescribed heroin and crack cocaine to users in Widnes in the 1980s and 1990s with reported results including plunging rates of acquisitive crime, HIV infection, deaths and numbers of residents who became addicts.
According to the latest statistics, drugrelated deaths doubled in Halton between the early 2000s and 2013-15.
Commenting on the topic, Mrs Johnson Griffiths said fix rooms were not being considered at present.
She said: “We continue to develop local services in line with national best practice and will review evidence of the effectiveness of schemes such as those in Glasgow and Durham once this becomes available.
“In the meantime if anyone would like more information, support or advice about substance misuse, they can contact the CGL service on 0151 422 1400 or visit their website at https://www. changegrowlive.org”
Dr Bijral said: “These facilities do not currently exist in the UK, despite having been established in some European cities for a number of years.
“We understand the importance of targeting high-risk individuals who are less likely to engage in treatment, and we address this challenge by prioritising outreach (including mobile treatment services), close liaison with partner agencies such as hostels and rough sleeper services, and the provision of effective needle exchange programmes.
“Through our community networks we have also widely distributed naloxone kits to give individuals a second chance at recovery if they should inadvertently overdose.
“We recognise that entering structured treatment is not always possible, or even desired by some individuals, and these people would be most likely to benefit from safer consumption rooms.
“While we are not currently looking to establish any facilities of this nature, we would certainly be open to working with any of our commissioners who may wish to consider this initiative.”
Cheshire Police And Crime Commissioner David Keane was approached for comment. COMPOSITE ROOF