Opened on January 13, the Thistle is the UK’s first such facility and aims to reduce the number of overdoses in the city
Glasgow City Council has praised staff at the new safer drug consumption facility after an encouraging first week. ‘The Thistle’ clinic formally opened on Monday, January 13, 2025 and received 131 attendees in its initial week of operation.

Booth in the Thistle drug-consumption clinic, photo courtesy of Glasgow City Council
The facility will be open from 9am to 9pm and every day of the year as part of a pilot scheme to test new ways of tackling drug use in the city. At the clinic, service users have access to safer injecting facilities than outside on the street and are provided with wound care, clean injecting equipment and naloxone as required.
A multidisciplinary team of nurses, psychologists, harm-reduction workers, social workers, medical staff and admin are on hand to support the service users. Staff can offer safer injection techniques and advice on reducing harms to minimise risk of overdose. They are also trained to intervene in the case of a service user suffering an overdose.
In fact, there were no medical emergencies resulting from drug use in this first week. Service users also took advantage of other benefits of the facility, such as the shower, laundry and lounge area. Some have already engaged with support in housing and drug treatment through engagement with the facility.
This all seems positive – though the initiative remains controversial.
A clinic of this sort was first proposed in 2016 as one of the key recommendations in the NHS report Taking away the chaos – The health needs of people who inject drugs in public places in Glasgow city centre. The authors stressed the need to pilot a safer injecting facility in a central location given, “that approximately 400 to 500 people may be injecting in public places in the city centre on a regular basis”. This high figure was “consistent with the number of individuals known to a local Assertive Outreach team set up to serve this population”.
However fierce debate then ensued between a number of stakeholders, not least the Scottish and UK governments, about the viability of such an initiative, let alone the ethics involved. When the clinic was finally approved in September 2023, the then Home Secretary still criticised the decision. ‘It’s the wrong policy and I don’t support the policy of drug consumption rooms,’ Suella Braverman told ITV. ‘I don’t believe they deal with the root cause of addiction and drug dependency.’
The hope is that the pilot, now up and running, will provide evidence on the efficacy of such an initiative.
Cllr Allan Casey, City Convener for Addiction Services, says: ‘It’s been an intense first week for the team as all eyes are on Glasgow. I am delighted to hear people are making use of all the facilities available at The Thistle.
‘We know this is not a silver bullet – but having a facility that is safe, hygienic and medically supervised will go a long way towards reducing drug-related overdoses, injection-related wounds and infections, and the negative impact that injecting outdoors has on local communities. It’s a promising start and I know the team, and everyone involved is eager to engage and welcome more people in the weeks and months to come.’
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