Glasgow has been blasted as an "open season” for drug dealers as residents fume over the UK’s first safe drug consumption facility.
Four months after the opening of the facility in the Scottish city, local residents are organising community gatherings to vent their frustrations and plan for change.
It comes after more than 2,000 medically supervised injections have taken place at The Thistle facility since January - resulting in 30 overdoses prompting immediate response from medically trained staff.
Despite the preservation of 30 lives, Scotland continues to have the highest number of drug related deaths in Europe.
Glasgow has been blasted as an 'open season' for drug dealers as residents fume over the UK’s first safe drug consumption facility
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Since opening, residents of Calton in the East End of Glasgow have had enough of rising crime, rapidly increasing public drug use and lacklustre support from the Scottish Government.
On Monday, around 80 people gathered at St Lukes for to attend a meeting comprising of lifelong residents to drug users, parents of young families and local councillors.
Residents gathered around a banner that read: “First Minister you best listen! We now demand action! Calton is our home, out community and our children deserve better!”
Jamie, 30 - a drug user of 15 years - attended the meeting and stressed his desire for proper treatment instead of incentivised drug use.
He told GB News: “When that place opened, I remember thinking I’m going to go and try it out, I want to go and see what it’s all about.
“When you grab your drugs you’re always alert for the coppers, but the word on the street from addicts is this circle of Calton is a no-go zone for the coppers - as soon as you get to the Barras the coppers won’t go near you.”
He added: "I get told my use case isn’t ‘chaotic’ enough, but I’d never overdosed until they put me on methadone.
“I was strung out on methadone worse than I've ever been on any drug in my life.”
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Jamie told GB News that the reduction of police has resulted in “open season” for dealers and the nearby soup kitchen is now “an open market for dealers to come in and provide table service.”
He added that instead of treatment, he was offered diamorphine: “That s**t is even worse than methadone.
“Can I please just get some funding for a treatment centre because I’m going to die out here. Before I came to this meeting I was trying to get myself the jail a few days ago because there’s no hope out here."
No Scottish Government ministers attended the meeting.
Community complaints were numerous and varied. One young mother said: "I’ve actually had someone defecate outside the front door of my house.
“Fair enough there’s safeguarding against drug deaths. But there’s no safeguarding for the community”.
Another described seeing two users behind his flat injecting into their genitals.
“I was absolutely stunned because I’d never seen anything like it,” he said.
“I phoned the police and about four hours later they phoned me back and asked if they were still there,” he said, throwing his hands up in despair.
Annemarie Ward, in recovery and now CEO of addiction charity Favor UK, said drug consumption services are "normalising addiction".
More than 2,000 medically supervised injections have taken place at The Thistle facility since January - resulting in 30 overdoses prompting immediate response from medically trained staff
GB News
“We’re not giving people the opportunity to get off drugs anymore, we’ve stopped doing it. The political will isn’t there, the political will has given up and I feel like giving up myself."
She continued: “We’ve got a £50million treatment budget in Glasgow, only £1.3million gets spent on rehab and only £300,000 is spent on recovery hubs.
“The other £48million is spent on these harm reduction interventions that aren’t treatment - clean needles aren’t treatment.”
The community takes issue with various other policies tied in with the facility, such as policing restrictions limiting policing of drug offences and a facility to permitting the use of contaminated drugs.
Lifelong Calton resident Linda Watson voiced her disgust that while The Thistle can test drugs for impurities and in the event of a positive result for contaminants, healthcare workers have to return the drugs to the user and if insistent, they have to watch as they inject poison into their veins.
She said the community wasn’t properly consulted before being flung into the SNP's “experiment” to curtail deaths.
“It’s brought more drug dealers here now,”she said.
"It’s brought more addicts and none of them live in this area.
“There’s more crime too, with lots of people saying their cars have been broken into and there’s a lot more violence in the street.”
While this provides security for drug users who seek to use The Thistle’s services without stigma, locals insist that this had a knock-on effect of escalating crime, break-ins and muggings.
