Home Secretary Sajid Javid urged to sanction drug consumption rooms

Tory Crispin Blunt, Labour’s Jeff Smith and crossbench peer Baroness Meacher, along with seven Police and Crime Commissioners, have written to Mr Javid urging him to allow local authorities to proceed with pilot schemes.

Drug consumption rooms, also known as Overdose Prevention Centres (OPCs), provide addicts with a safer place to consume their drugs, with sterilised equipment, medical help and advice on hand.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy Reform, which is co-chaired by the three politicians, said in the letter that OPCs have been established in many countries with “good public health results” and an “absence of the feared negative consequences”.

“We and many of our colleagues have been assessing their value as part of local strategies to reduce drug-related deaths and infections (primarily HIV and hepatitis), as well as incidences of public disorder and needle litter,” they wrote.

“We are supportive of areas that wish to proceed with their implementation.

“We therefore call on the Government to allow the relevant local authorities the discretion to proceed with locally developed, closely evaluated pilots.”

The APPG said a refusal to sanction evidence-based interventions which would bring down drug-related deaths appears to be “complacent and dangerous”.

Last week, National Records of Scotland statistics showed that more than 1,100 people died from drugs in Scotland in 2018 – higher than the reported rate for any other EU country.