How controversial drug rooms could mean safer streets in city
Are drug-consumption rooms one solution to the Welsh capital’s growing drug and homelessness crisis? One charity boss certainly thinks so, as Will Hayward reports...
AN “important and positive step forward” in tackling Cardiff’s drug and homelessness crisis is currently being ignored, it is claimed.
Anyone walking through Cardiff will see the challenges of drugs and homelessness in the Welsh capital.
There has been a year-on-year increase in the numbers of people injecting drugs and sleeping rough on the streets of Cardiff.
However, dozens of studies and leading experts believe there is a simple measure that would make a huge difference to both the individuals themselves, and the wider community – drug consumption rooms.
Homeless services in Cardiff such as the Huggard are calling on the UK government to allow them open these rooms.
As you can imagine, a drug consumption room is simply an indoor space where addicts can take illegal drugs under supervision.
Experts say there are two overriding benefits to these rooms – to both the individual and the community.
For the drug user this means:
■ Reduced risk of an overdose because people are supervising them;
■ a massive reduction in users getting diseases like HIV due to sharing needles and unhygienic injection; and
■ it’s much easier to connect drug users with addiction treatment and other health and social services;.
For the rest of the community this means:
■ Less drug paraphernalia like needles left in parks and public places; and
■ fewer peope heavily intoxicated or in zombie-like states in public places.
At the moment if someone is found with drugs in one of Cardiff’s homelessness support facilities they have to ask them to leave.
Under the Misuse of Drugs Act of 1971 you can not “facilitate somebody taking illicit substances” and could, in theory, be prosecuted for doing so.
This means they must insist that the person leaves, which pushes the problem onto the streets.
Huggard chief executive Richard Edwards is calling for the introduction of drug consumption rooms.
He said: “For those without accommodation, addictions can be a major barrier to coming off the streets. Access to substance misuse support is under-resourced and often individuals are excluded from services and pushed back onto the streets due to their need to take illicit substances.
“This can close a door on treatment and recovery.
“Within the day centre at Huggard we cannot allow people to take illicit drugs and most of the issues and conflicts we face, with people we are trying to support, are drugs related.
“This in turn impacts on those people who are not using drugs who share facilities with people who are always trying to find somewhere to use.”
The first supervised drug consumption room was opened in Berne, Switzerland in June 1986. Further facilities of this type were then established in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Norway, Luxembourg, Denmark, Greece and France.
Ireland and Portugal have also recently introduced the rooms.
In all places where they have been introduced there has been a positive impact on drug use in the area.
Most recently, a leaked report from Bristol Council recommended their introduction in the city across the bridge as they had “saved significant lives”.
It said: “It is clear from the evidence that where Drug Control Rooms have been established they are effective at reducing the impact of drug use on the individuals using them and the wider communities affected.”
Huggard Chief Mr Edwards said it was not about legitimising drug use, but instead managing the problem.
He said: “We know that drug use causes harm and we don’t condone it, but it is a reality. We are not able to combat that reality by pretending it doesn’t exist or by condemning it. We need to support people to come to terms with and manage their addictions.
“We need to minimise the harm that people are causing to themselves and others. We need to support people into treatment services. We need to get drug use off our streets.
“In the countries that have introduced supervised drug consumption facilities they have seen a dramatic decrease in public drug use and discarded drug litter by bringing people into services.
“Minimising the risks of infection and fatal overdose, such centres can reduce peer pressure to take drugs and, coupled with harm reduction advice and support, can better support people into treatment services.
“There is no evidence from anywhere that these facilities encourage people to take or start taking drugs.
“As a society, the people compelled to live on our streets affected by substance misuse are our children, our brothers, our sisters, our family and our friends.
“We might not like it, but we have a duty to do something about it and rescue as many people that we can.
“We also have a duty to the wider public to ensure that where there is public drug use that we do everything we can to take it off the streets, to maximise public safety and to ensure that drug use on our streets is not seen by the next generation as being normal.”
In 2016 the public advisory body, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, recommended that the rooms be trialled.
However, only this month, the UK Government said that it had “no plans to introduce them”.
Victoria Atkins MP said in a letter: “The government is not prepared to sanction or condone activities that support... the availability of drugs and causes harm to individuals and communities”.