Shooting gallery for addicts ‘may breach UN rules on drugs’
A UNITED Nations drugs consultant last night warned plans for a heroin ‘shooting gallery’ in Scotland would breach international conventions.
Dr Ian Oliver, a former chief constable at Grampian police, said the proposed facility risked flouting key protocols.
Plans to open the unit – where addicts can inject heroin without fear of prosecution – were unanimously approved by Glasgow health and council officials last
‘Reduce misuse, not encourage it’
month. Prosecutors are now considering granting a special exemption for the clinic to protect its bosses from legal action, amid fears it would breach the Misuse of Drugs Act.
But Dr Oliver, a world-renowned drugs expert, told the Mail it also flouted global drugs agreements – and risked sending out the ‘wrong message’ to children.
He said the plan ‘is in contravention of Article 4 of the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs to which the UK is a signatory, which limits drugs for legitimate scientific and medical purposes’, and that ‘there is no way providing facilities for the use of drugs… can be described as medical purposes’. He added: ‘Any government policy must be motivated by the consideration that it must first do no harm.
‘There is an obligation to protect citizens and the compassionate and sensible method must be to do everything possible to reduce dependency and misuse, not to encourage or facilitate it.
‘It is incumbent on national governments to co-operate in securing the greatest good for the greatest number. The obligation on any government must be rehabilitation, not the promotion of drug use.’
Dr Oliver also highlighted the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 33, which ‘makes it incumbent upon all governments to protect children from the use and abuse of drugs’.
It stipulates that governments ‘shall take all appropriate measures, including legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect children from the illicit use of narcotic drugs’.
Dr Oliver has previously pointed to similar drug-injection facilities elsewhere, including in Vancouver, Canada, where addicts openly inject in the street near the Insite facility.
Drug deaths in the area rose in the first few years after the clinic was set up.
Under the plans for Glasgow, drug users as young as 16 will be able to bring their own supply of heroin and use one of 12 injecting booths under medical supervision.
It will include an area for ‘hero-in-assisted treatment’, where the worst addicts will get medicalgrade drugs.
Taxpayers will foot the bill of around £2.4million a year – almost £6,500 a day.
Backers believe the scheme will reduce drug-related deaths and infections in the city.
But critics fear it will become a magnet for dealers, encourage drug use and result in syringes being discarded in the streets. Scottish Tory MSP Adam Tomkins said: ‘The Scottish Conservatives are concerned that so-called “shooting galleries” will send the wrong message and do more harm than good.
‘Government at all levels – including local authorities – should be using their powers to deter, never to encourage, the use of dangerous and illegal drugs.’
The Health and Social Care Partnership, which proposed the plan, said: ‘The Lord Advocate [James Wolffe, QC] has been approached with regards to a legal framework.
‘There are many safer injecting facilities in the world in countries also signed up to the UN conventions. These countries... developed legal frameworks to allow the delivery of such services.’
‘Do more harm than good’