Drug rooms Plans for overdose prevention centre move forward

A PLAN for Bristol to set up England's first 'Overdose Prevention Centre' - a facility which allows illegal drug users to take their drugs in a supervised space took a big step forward last night with a major meeting held to discuss how it would work.

- Tristan CORK

Britain's first of such centres opened earlier this year in Glasgow, but only after years of legal wrangling and a decision by politicians in Scotland that police wouldn't prosecute those who run it.

Six months on, and the doctor who runs the NHS service in Glasgow is in Bristol to talk to health chiefs, drug charities and police about how it is going, and whether such a facility could be started in Bristol. Whether an Overdose Prevention Centre (OPC) could legally be set up in Bristol remains a grey area, with the UK Government maintaining it would be against the law, but uncertainty over whether the police and the CPS in England would actually prosecute medical professionals who did set one up.

OPCs work by providing a supervised space for people to take illegal drugs - usually heroin, crack, or synthetic opioids - with emergency treatment available should they overdose. In Glasgow, the first sanctioned 'Safer Drug Consumption Facility, called The Thistle, opened in January and in the first 12 weeks there were 16 overdose incidents.

The people running the facility say those people would almost certainly have died had they been at home or out on the streets when that happened, but their lives were saved by staff having medication to bring them round and call paramedics quickly.