Using Centres

I heard on the radio on the way to work yesterday that they are opening places for 'safer drug consumption' in Glasgow. These are going to be places where you can use (but not buy or share) drugs in an environment where there are medical staff on hand to prevent you from overdosing and possibly dying from that overdose. It's going to be trialled over a 3-year period and will cost £2.3 million per year.

Apparently, around 100 people die from drug overdoses every month in Scotland at the moment so this scheme is looking to reduce that amount. I suppose that when a person overdoses they are absolutely unable to help themselves at that time and their possible survival is in the hands of others who notice it happening. I know that drugs such as Naloxone can be administered to counteract the effects of the original drug and have a lot of success plus ensuring the person keeps breathing and is kept safe during and immediately after their overdose. I am making connections in my mind to recent training I have had of how to act if one of my students has an epileptic seizure.

So, if you were alone somewhere and overdosed on heroin etc, the chances of dying are very high. In one of these places, presumably you would be monitored and assisted if the worst happened. As it was the radio, the mind filled in the blanks as to what the physical set-up would be. I imagine semi-private spaces with an area to recline and toilets/refreshments as standard with probably clean needles available and place to dispose of them afterwards. The medical staff would need their own space to work and support staff to run the admin side. It needs to be appealing enough for people to go there but, as with prisons, there is the idea that it can't be made too attractive or it is said to be encouraging bad behaviour.

This brings me to the moral argument around it. Towards the end of the piece on the radio, a speaker condemned the new project as being something that 'will encourage harm' but others mainly focused on saving lives. This debate reminds me of the discussions you hear around the practice in various parts of the world of having legalised brothels. If sex-workers are working in those, they are much safer from disease, crime (theft/violence) and exploitation than if they were running their own trade.

However, it still means that sex is being sold or people are still ingesting dangerous toxic substances. Ideally, neither of these things would happen at all...people would only allow substances that enhance their well-being into their bodies and sex would just be between consenting adults as part of a loving and/or mutually satisfying union. HOWEVER, if we are being realistic then we have to admit this is NOT how it is all over the world and hasn't been since time began. I would love there to be more work on why people are choosing or having to choose the more damaging things and support them to make better choices but, in the absence of enough of that, the 'using centres' will very likely save lives.