Supporters of Glasgow’s ‘shooting gallery’ insist plan can still go ahead

AT first reading the decision by the Lord Advocate to block the opening of a safer drug-taking clinic for heroin users in Glasgow appeared to be the kiss of death for the project.

The backers of the UK’s first “shooting gallery” had always been clear about the need for a tolerance zone around the centre, where users of street heroin could bring the drug to inject safely under medical supervision.

The target clientele – a loose and fluctuating group of up to 500 chaotic drug users, who otherwise take the drug in city centre alleys and back courts, putting the public and themselves at risk – are hardly likely to attend if they face being picked up for possession on their way there.

Having announced its plans, the city’s Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP) wrote to the Lord Advocate, asking for some kind of guarantee users of the safer-injecting pilot would not be prosecuted for possession.

After seeking legal advice and a period of deliberation the Lord Advocate has dashed those hopes. There is no prospect of a change to prosecution policy, he says, and the HSCP should press ahead with the only “legal” aspect of their plan, a clinic offering medical grade heroin for a select group of users where other efforts at rehab have failed.

Supporters of the scheme were dismayed – notably Andrew Horne, of the charity Addaction in Scotland, who points out that there is already an effective tolerance zone around a couple of hundred needle exchanges in Scotland. The Lord Advocate is out of line with views within the Government, he suggests and his reasoning “confused”.

Within the Crown Office, there is a view that it would be hard to limit the effects of any exemption zone. Any drug user in Glasgow picked up with a bag of heroin could claim in court they were just on their way to the “fix room” and potentially avoid any criminal charges. Anyone with an appointment there could become an untouchable mule for the drug gangs, it is suggested.

But there is a major question about the value of prosecuting anyone in possession of heroin for personal use.

Scotland’s jails and courts have been filled with those at the bottom end of the drugs market for decades now, and you’d be hard pushed to point to that having achieved much social good. Some of those jailed emerge with a worse habit. Others have overdosed on release. When the Scottish Government is busy pursuing a presumption that courts will no longer use short sentences, to insist the full weight of the law is thrown at people with a dependency seems questionable.

However, the Lord Advocate’s view, combined with problems in finding a suitable venue, seemed to suggest the pilot will not proceed.

That’s not the view of the council and health board backers of the scheme. While acknowledging the setback, they say other countries from Ireland to Australia have managed it, but it took years for legislative change.

The hope was Glasgow could achieve it in time to start next year. That won’t now happen. But neither the plan – nor those whose lives it will potentially save – will be abandoned.