Drug charity boss defies authorities in bid to open overdose prevention service

The boss of a major charity on the frontline of Britain’s drug deaths crisis has thrown down the gauntlet to authorities by announcing that he plans to open potentially life-saving overdose prevention facilities in a matter of months – with or without their help.

- ANDY GREGORY

As drugs charities brace for a feared influx of lethally strong synthetic opioids to hit the UK, experts are urging Rishi Sunak’s government to end its longstanding opposition to facilities where people can consume illicit drugs in the presence of trained staff armed with the overdose reversal drug naloxone.

While Scotland is now pushing ahead to create the UK’s first official facility in Glasgow – after a game-changing intervention by the country’s top legal authority put an end to a long-running Holyrood-Westminster dispute – hopes for similar services in England and Wales are yet to materialise.

Exasperated by years of fruitless discussions while drug deaths mount, and bolstered by developments in Scotland, Martin Blakeborough, chief executive of the charity Kaleidoscope has now told The Independent that he plans to pilot several “micro” drug consumption spaces in south Wales as early as this summer – potentially even sooner than the Glasgow centre opens its doors. “It’s an active debate we’re now having in Wales which I’ve basically forced onto the agenda, partly by saying, ‘We’re going to start this service with or without you,’” said Mr Blakeborough.

“We’ve been discussing this in Wales for 10 years, and we’ve done nothing,” he added. “The Scottish one gave me the confidence to say, ‘I’m going to blow your cover now, I’m going to cause a fuss about this,’ and at long last it’s gone up the political agenda.”