Nurses to distribute heroin in Glasgow
The NHS has hired specialist nurses in Glasgow to give out heroin to addicts in a treatment centre that will be the first of its kind in Britain.
A Heroin Assisted Treatment (HAT) Centre is set to open this summer between Gallowgate and Duke Street, according to a report in the Mail on Sunday.
Nurses will provide addicts with up to three hits of medical-grade heroin per day, which they will be able to inject on site. It is expected to cost £15,000 per patient.
It is the first scheme of its kind in the UK but similar centres operate in Germany, Canada and Switzerland.
Neil McKeganey, founding director of the Centre for Drug Misuse Research, criticised the scheme. He told the Mail on Sunday: “The treatment of people addicted to heroin should be focussed on helping them into a drug-free state, not facilitating dependence.”
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde believe the centre will reduce pressure on health services and cut crime.
Adam Tomkins, Conservative MSP for Glasgow, wrote in the Mail on Sunday that he thought the HATs were the wrong approach.
https://twitter.com/ProfTomkins/status/1109802923515658242
He said: “The direction in which our drugs policy has to turn for it to succeed is to find ways, not of making it easier to take heroin, but of making it easier to talk about and to confront the reasons why people take heroin.”
There have been repeated calls for drug consumption rooms to be opened in Glasgow. They differ from HATs in that heroin addicts use them to take their own heroin.
MSPs backed the proposals in April last year, but they were deemed illegal under the Misuse of Drugs Act.
