EXCLUSIVE Addicts slumped in doorways, discarded needles and more dealers, life beside SNP's drugs consumption room
Slumped in a doorway surrounded by drugs paraphernalia an addict lies collapsed in a drug-induced haze.
Yards away are grassy areas littered with drugs 'debris' – hypodermic needles and heroin pipes.
Just around the corner, and, sadly with more than a hint of irony, sits the SNP 's £2.3million 'harm reduction' centre that was opened to stop this very thing happening.
When he visited with great fanfare in January John Swinney proclaimed Britain's first safer drugs consumption room as a 'significant step forward' in tackling Scotland's appalling record of harm and deaths caused by drugs.
Yet, residents and businesses talk of a 'living hell' and are now threatening to quit the area as they are met with daily scenes of drug addicts injecting in the street, discarded needles strewn around their neighbourhood and drug dealing.
The facility in question is The Thistle, officially referred to as a 'safer drugs consumption room'. Those less supportive of its operation say it is nothing more than a heroin 'shooting gallery'.
It allows addicts to inject their own drugs under medical supervision in a bid to reduce overdose deaths and cut discarded needles in public places.
Such is the SNP government's support for the venture they have committed to backing it with £2million of public cash – every year.
However, for many living and working in the area, its opening has been far from a positive development.
Many believe the problem of addicts openly taking drugs in the streets has increased as well as the proliferation of dirty needles being discarded in their neighbourhoods and drug dealing.
This week the Mail on Sunday visited the area to speak to residents and businesses and see first-hand the situation they find themselves in.
It did not take long to understand why they are angry.
In a patch of grass facing a row of houses a pile of litter was the first sign of drug use.
Wrappers for needles, handed out by health professionals, lie next to state-issued 'foil' – provided to addicts to help them take a hit safely.
Elsewhere we find dirty needles, used and discarded where anyone, including children, could suffer a needlestick injury.
Even in areas where specially-designed needle bins have been installed there are still used syringes lying in the open.
We also encountered faeces-covered clothing discarded in areas littered with dirty needles.
One addict, having finished shooting up, had chosen to stick their dirty syringe into the grass where they'd been sitting – a health threat left for others to deal with.
No wonder local people are furious at the situation.
Resident Vanessa Paton said: 'I have sympathy for these people but they're not interested or responsible and this room is just facilitating their addiction. They're saying this project is in its infancy, but it's already like Beirut, it's like living in a war zone.
'It's like the day of the living dead and we're being told this is normal and the project is working. You're encouraging and enabling people, not helping anyone to come off drugs.'
Martin Keown, is the director of Calton M.O.T. Centre, which is just a four-minute walk from The Thistle.
He said: 'Since that building was opened, our car park space has become overrun by addicts and their needles. It's also become a dumping ground for all the drugs kits containing needles, alcohol swabs, and foil spoons.
'Even though I've spent £18,000 to install a new fence and a solid steel gate at my own expense, users are still jumping over the fence to hit up in my yard. They're leaving used needles, and sometimes even fully loaded needles that are ready to go.'
He added: 'A few months ago we found two fully loaded needles propped up against the fence posts like pencils, as if the addicts set them up to use but then got distracted.
'My kids found it and said: 'Dad we've just found something bad that looks like blood in the yard.' They're nine and six.'
Footage filmed inside the car park shows an addict brazenly perched against a car, as he prepares to inject himself in the open despite being less than 200 yards from the taxpayer-funded facility designed for that very purpose.
The locals who encounter, challenge and talk to some of the addicts who engage in this behaviour say there are numerous reasons why they are still taking drugs in the open.
Some have said they will not go to the centre as they distrust the authorities, while others say they need to get their fix immediately after buying drugs, without having to walk to Hunter Street where The Thistle is based.
Linda Watson, 68, is a community activist, who was raised in the area.
She said: 'A lot of users are not using the actual facility. They are coming here simply because they know there's a supply here. We're just being used as guinea pigs, we're part of a big experiment and there's no-one here to support us. The drug littering has been diabolical, some hit spots ended up with a total carpet of paraphernalia and syringes.'
'I love where I live, we were all brought up here, but people just don't feel safe anymore. People are publicly injecting themselves, they don't even try to hide it.'
She added: 'A few weeks ago there was someone sitting in the play park when kids are cutting through to get to school, with his trousers down blatantly shooting up.'
The impact of is making it harder for some businesses to operate.
Janet Rogers, 55, started working in Bobbi D's salon on nearby Gallowgate in 1989 and worked her way up till she eventually took it over.
She said: 'A lot of older people come to me because my business has been going for so long. But a lot of them don't want to come out now because they're scared. They're getting intimidated by dealers and users – there's loads of them just hanging about, lurking.
'They're getting in the closes beside the shop. I've seen plenty of shooting up, they leave needles and tin foil lying about outside the shop, it's terrible.'
Ms Rogers fears she will have to close up as a result of the issues she is facing.
She added: 'This shop has been my whole life and I just feel totally burnt out with it all, it's just soul-destroying.'
The idea behind The Thistle is that by allowing addicts to inject their own drugs under medical supervision, the number of people suffering an overdose can be reduced as well as the number of discarded needles.
However, in light of our investigation, the Scottish Conservatives have called for the SNP administration to end its 'reckless experiment'.
MSP Annie Wells, who acts as the party's drugs spokeswoman, said: 'The SNP's flagship drug consumption room is making life a misery for local residents and businesses.
'They pinned all their hopes on state-sponsored drug taking, but their solution is failing. Locals are being left to clean up the SNP's mess.
'If the Nationalists continue down this road, businesses near The Thistle will be left with no choice than to sell up and move away.
'SNP ministers should call time on this reckless experiment and finally back the game-changing Right to Recovery Bill, which would enshrine in law a right to treatment.'
The Thistle, which has already seen more than 250 addicts use its facilities to inject more than 3,000 times in total, is run by Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership.
Councillor Allan Casey, city convener for addictions, said: 'We understand the ongoing concerns from residents. We have a community forum set up and running specifically for residents and businesses to attend to allow us to hear directly from them and take necessary actions.
'However, to suggest crime and drug use are new problems in this community is a blatant denial of decades of challenges this community has faced.
'The Thistle is not the cause of these issues — it is part of the solution. In fact, the Thistle has undoubtedly saved lives that would have otherwise been lost thanks to the intervention of staff.'
The Scottish Government said it recognises people's concerns and that its partners 'are addressing them through outreach work, ongoing needle uplift operations, and plans to expand public needle disposal bins'.
It also said 'a comprehensive independent evaluation' will examine the service's impact and that research and evaluation from similar facilities around the world has shown such facilities 'can reduce levels of public drug consumption and publicly discarded drug-related litter'.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
5 hours ago
- The Guardian
Who is in charge at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention?
Who is in charge at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)? The answer is more complicated than it may seem. With no confirmed or acting CDC director, Robert F Kennedy Jr has direct control over the agency, allowing him to sign off – or not – on vaccine recommendations, according to legal experts. Yet Kennedy, the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), testified before a Senate committee in May that someone else is running the agency – creating confusion that could lead to legal challenges. 'There's not a CDC director or acting director. Essentially, RFK Jr is the director of the CDC,' said Paul Offit, professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. Kennedy now has 'a lot more opportunity to actually influence the outcome of these decisions and to take actions in the absence of a Senate-confirmed director', said Renée Landers, professor and director of the health law program at Suffolk University Law School in Boston. The dismissal of 17 independent vaccine advisers and their replacement with less experienced advisers, some of whom have histories of anti-vaccine activism, is 'very concerning', especially given Kennedy's rejection of germ theory and his own anti-vaccine activism, Landers said. On Thursday, the independent vaccine advisers appointed by Kennedy voted to ban thimerosal, a preservative (also known as thiomersal) with a demonstrated safety record, from 4% of flu vaccines in the US. The remaining 96% of flu vaccines, as well as all other childhood vaccines, were already free of thimerosal out of an abundance of caution, despite decades of research indicating the preservative's safety. The move will make it harder for some people to access the flu vaccine. The recommendation would normally be taken up by the CDC director, either to reject, or to implement as official, guidance from the agency. But for now, those decisions go directly to Kennedy, who has already exercised these capabilities before. On 13 May, 'with pending confirmation of a new CDC Director', the health secretary adopted the recommendations for Chikungunya vaccines to be officially recommended by the CDC, according to the agency's website. Kennedy did not sign off on the committee's votes for two other vaccines against RSV and meningitis. Those vaccines, recommended in April by the independent advisers whom Kennedy dismissed this month, still have not gotten official CDC recommendations; it's not clear whether or when they will. Kennedy also recently directed the CDC to change its Covid vaccine recommendations, softening the recommendation for children and ending it for pregnant people entirely, despite strong evidence that pregnancy is a major risk factor for severe illness and death. 'It is concerning that the power vacuum leaves open his ability to make these decisions that are inconsistent with scientific consensus,' Landers said. Congress introduced a new law in 2023 that directors of the CDC must now undergo Senate confirmation. This appointment is the first time the CDC director has gone through the process. 'It is a little bit of uncharted waters,' Landers said. David Weldon was first nominated and then withdrawn hours before his Senate confirmation hearing in March. Susan Monarez served as acting director from 23 January until she was nominated on 24 March, at which point she stepped down. Once someone has been nominated for director, they cannot serve as acting director. Monarez testified in her Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday, but it's not clear when lawmakers will vote on the nomination, In the absence of an acting director, the head of HHS has control of the agency, according to the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998. Signing off – or not – on CDC recommendations cannot be 'delegated down' to other officials under the vacancies act, said Anne Joseph O'Connell, a professor at Stanford Law School; 'it can only go up' to the HHS secretary. 'What's unusual about this situation is that we generally think having exclusive duties go 'up' to the agency head when there is a lower-level vacancy is a good thing. But here many don't trust the secretary on these matters,' O'Connell said. Kennedy put forth a different name for who is in charge of the CDC in May testimony before the Senate's health, education, labor and pensions committee. 'Who is the acting CDC director?' Lisa Blunt Rochester, the Democratic senator from Delaware, asked. 'The acting director was Susan Monarez, but she is now up for permanent director, so she's been replaced by Matt Buzzelli,' Kennedy said, describing Buzzelli as 'a public health expert'. But there's no indication that Buzzelli, a lawyer who is listed as chief of staff in the office of the CDC director, is acting director, nor is he qualified for the position. 'Buzzelli cannot be the acting CDC head,' O'Connell said. He's not the first assistant to the CDC director, he's not Senate-confirmed, and he did not serve 90 days in the year before the last director of the CDC left, O'Connell said: 'There is no wiggle room.' The lack of clarity is compounded by the Trump administration's non-compliance with information requirements, experts said. The CDC, along with other agencies, is required to update each year an office of personnel management site about who holds which jobs, a deadline the agencies missed in March. Buzzelli 'has been carrying out some of the duties of the CDC Director as the Senior Official, as necessary, and is surrounded by highly qualified medical professionals and advisors to help fulfill these duties as appropriate', Andrew Nixon, HHS director of communications, told Stat News in May. (HHS did not respond to the Guardian's media inquiry.) Such actions could open the officials up to legal challenges. Without official documentation naming Buzzelli and other decision-makers to official positions, they would not have the designated authority to make certain decisions, which means their actions could be challenged. For instance, they may not be authorized to enter into new contracts or end prior agreements early with state, local, tribal and territorial governments – potentially opening up any such actions to lawsuits. 'The person who takes the action has to be someone lawfully appointed to the position. To the extent that agencies try to skirt that kind of requirement, it does leave the decisions vulnerable to legal challenge,' Landers said.
Telegraph
10 hours ago
- Telegraph
Reform the NHS, not our shopping baskets
This week, the NHS will publish its 10 Year Health Plan. The most we can expect from this exercise in Soviet-style planning is tinkering around the edges of an edifice that was erected when Joseph Stalin ruled in Moscow. By 2035, the end date of this 10-year plan, the country will almost certainly be unable to afford the NHS in its present form – if, indeed, it hasn't collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions by then. Unable to address the fundamental problems of the NHS, the dirigistes of Whitehall have come up with a new plan to direct us how to lead our lives – telling us what we should or shouldn't be allowed to choose to put in our shopping baskets. Supermarkets will be expected to cut 100 calories from the average shopping basket by limiting sales of sugary and salty snacks or other 'junk food'. Ever since Napoleon Bonaparte sneered at England as 'a nation of shopkeepers', we have worn his insult as a badge of honour. We are proud to be a people who earn our living by trade and we cherish the liberties that are the glory of a commercial society. Even those of us who are not shopkeepers are at least customers. So little does this Labour Government know the British people that it is about to resort to distinctly Napoleonic measures to punish both retailers and consumers. Yet previous attempts to control consumption have never succeeded in changing enduring patterns of behaviour rooted in human nature. It is outrageous that officials feel empowered to tell us what we can, and cannot, eat. The public is being infantilised and robbed of agency. Centuries have passed since Parliament abandoned sumptuary laws that prohibited the lower orders from imitating the luxurious dress of the aristocracy. But the bureaucratic mind is obdurate in its disdain for popular tastes in food and drink. Combined with Labour's instinct to meddle, along with its insatiable fiscal appetite, it is no surprise that, as we report today, a modern version of the sumptuary laws is about to land on an unsuspecting nation. Obesity is a genuine and growing problem, but, hitherto, all attempts to address it by fiscal means have failed. The latest obesity tax – supermarkets will be fined if they don't reduce the nation's calorie intake, and this will inevitably be passed on to consumers – now emerging from the bowels of the Health Department and the Treasury, claims to be aimed directly at our waistlines. In reality, like all its predecessors, it will target our wallets. There is a certain grim irony in the fact that this policy should have been adopted at the same time as the decision by the NHS to prescribe the weight-loss drug semaglutide (contained in Ozempic and Wegovy). It is fairly obvious that the underlying rationale of the new regulations is less about obesity than about the Government's failure to control spending. No doubt figures will be trotted out about how many lives will be saved by cutting consumption of ultra-processed foods or any other category of comestible that attracts the ire of the health bureaucrats. But the truth is that new rules are being concocted because the Government is running scared of its own MPs, who have effectively imposed a veto on cuts in welfare spending. What would genuinely make a difference to life expectancy and health outcomes would, of course, be a radical reform of the NHS, a more active population, and a reduction in the numbers wasting their lives on benefits. Rachel Reeves has just poured another £29 billion into the health service, without any clear cost-benefit calculation. Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, is intelligent enough to know that he has inherited an obsolete behemoth that is crying out for root-and-branch reform. But building a new consensus for a new NHS would require the Labour Party to rethink its assumptions about the social contract, as well as the role of insurance and individual responsibility. The original 1946 NHS Act created 'a comprehensive health service designed to secure improvement in the physical and mental health of the people of England and Wales'. Today, the nation's health is not safe in the hands of a dysfunctional Labour Party that would rather do anything – even introducing an assisted-dying service – than take on the overdue task of making the NHS fit for purpose. These new directives are at best a displacement activity, at worst an act of fiscal condescension. A nation of shopkeepers deserves better than to be bossed around by its own government.
Times
17 hours ago
- Times
Chris Hoy phoned after my diagnosis. If only I'd listened to him earlier
Last year, like millions of people, I read with astonishment the news that Sir Chris Hoy, one of our most decorated Olympians, had been diagnosed with cancer. A few months later, Hoy revealed that it was advanced stage 4 prostate cancer, that it had spread to his bones and was incurable. The common thought I suspect so many of us had was — blimey, how can one of the fittest people on the planet get that? I'd been lucky enough to be in the front row at the Olympic Velodrome in 2012 when two mountainous men on bikes exoceted towards the finish line at 50mph — Hoy getting across the line almost by sheer force of will to beat his opponent and claim his sixth Olympic gold. Superhuman. • Jeremy Clarkson: I don't mind prostate checks — beats being dead On hearing Sir Chris's devastating statement, the males among us, particularly those aged 67 like me, probably also thought, if he can get it, we ought to get ourselves checked. I certainly intended to. But I never did. Seeing friends, football matches, even walking the dog, simply life itself, just seemed to intervene and, anyway I felt fine — no symptoms. Then just two months later, numb with shock, pretty much unable to speak, I found myself listening to a calm, mellifluous Scottish brogue talking me through my own identical diagnosis, based on his experience. Chris was on the phone. He called me after hearing through a mutual contact. It was a mental lifeline. It's impossible to describe the devastation any stage 4 cancer diagnosis causes — unless you are one of the thousands who receive one. Exact figures for stage 4 prostate are a bit sketchy, but it's approaching 10,000 men every year. Including their wider families, that's a heck of a lot of annual shock. And the numbers are increasing. My own physical problems began during one of those trips I'd long planned after stepping back from daily news-reading duties in February 2023. I was on a long-anticipated trip to southeast Asia with my wife when I started to feel distinctly weird. As the days went on, I could hardly get out of bed, and by the time we made it to the flight home I was in agony. I felt like I'd been shot in the back. So, it was straight off the flight — a taxi to A&E and five hours later my world was upended. The cancer was spreading fast, and I needed immediate surgery to keep me alive. After the numbness and shock of diagnosis, the negative thoughts come flooding in. Firstly, of course, how long have I got? Then, 'Why, oh why, didn't I get that check?' hard on its heels. And perhaps the worst, 'You bloody fool, what have you done to your family?' There have been positives too, though, plenty of them, believe it or not. First, let what has happened to us be a wake-up call to other men. I'd write this next sentence in 6in-high capital letters, like some demented world leader on his own social-media platform, if the sub-editors would allow it. If you're over 50, in a high-risk group or have a family history, get yourself checked. Do it and do it this week. And if your GP thinks it's not worth doing, you have a right to insist. So insist. • My night with the prostate vigilantes offering tests the NHS won't It's a simple prostate specific antigen (PSA) test. It only costs a few quid. It can cause false alarm in some cases, but surely if it picked up more cases in their early, easily treatable phase, it would save the NHS millions? Prostate cancer is the second most common cause of cancer death in males in the UK, accounting for 14 per cent of all cancer deaths in men. Testing is particularly pertinent for me personally because, as part of my job as an interviewer, I sat on TV sofas and in studios for decades hearing clinicians, medics and researchers saying get tested when you pass 50. I listened but didn't act. The only crumb of comfort I have from the reasons for my procrastination is that I never had any obvious symptoms — increased night-time peeing, blood in the urine, uncontrollable urges to go. So be aware this disease is insidious and can spread silently and rapidly. There are even positives for members of the stage 4 club. A lot of the headlines about Chris Hoy's news and now mine screamed that we have terminal cancer. Well, yes and no. Life itself is terminal ultimately, after all, and so often for those with prostate cancer, some other condition gets you first. • Chris Hoy: I'm busy proving life doesn't have to stop Doctors have to put a number of years on how long you've got, because it's usually the first question they get asked. But everyone responds to the medicines differently, and prostate cancer is heterogenous. So, I prefer to say, sure, it's incurable, but it is treatable, and becoming increasingly so, with the myriad discoveries, repurposed drugs and new combinations coming down the track. Is there a chance, cutting-edge researchers such as Sir Chris Evans, founder of the Cancer Awareness Trust, are asking, that we're not too far away from it becoming like HIV — once a death sentence, but now manageable? And I'm not just saying that because I want it to happen. But the greatest positives? They are obvious life-lessons really, but too many of us forget about them. Family, friends and living in the moment. I couldn't get through this without my wife, children and wider family backing me up so resolutely. Emotional support, hospital trips, banter — even breakfast in bed! I think about them more than I do the cancer — and I'm sure that goes for all of us with stage 4. Friends — as the saying goes, you learn who the real ones are. So many people I lost touch with over the years have been getting back in contact, leading to more of those damn regrets — why didn't I give them a ring years ago? And fundamentally you appreciate precisely how many minutes there are in each day and how to use them wisely. In my case, some of those minutes are allocated to training for Chris Hoy's wonderful charity initiative, the Tour de 4 bike ride in Glasgow in September. I've got an inkling I might not be able to keep up with him. Dermot Murnaghan hosts Legends of News, a new podcast available on all platforms. He is riding the Tour de 4 to raise money for Prostate Cancer UK. You can donate here.
