But critics are equally vocal, and remain sceptical about the long-term benefits it may bring, while raising concerns over resources being diverted away from addiction services, drug paraphernalia littered around the centre and the wider impact on local communities.
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Two potential sites have been identified for a drug consumption room, on the Cowgate or Spittal Street. Edinburgh’s Integration Joint Board (EIJB), a council-NHS partnership which oversees health and social care in the city, said the service would need to be located in the Old Town which “has the greatest concentration of harms related to public injecting and other high risk public drug use,” according to a recent report.
Edinburgh’s proposal is to open a facility similar to The Thistle, with seven injecting booths alongside services for wound care, virus testing and drug checking, alongside other health services. A report stated that running the service would require a “robust team of staff,” with costs and staffing levels depending on opening hours. Operating eight hours a day would need 25.9 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff, while a 12-hour day would require 44.6 FTEs.
Glasgow drug consumption facility(Image: Newsquest)
The Thistle is funded by the Scottish Government with a commitment of up to £2.3 million per year, and a previous “broad estimate” put the cost of Edinburgh’s drug consumption at up to £2m a year.
On Monday, city councillors took one of the most significant steps to date by agreeing to launch a public consultation, including on the physical location of the facility, so Edinburgh’s communities can formally express their views.
Labour councillor Tim Pogson, chair of the EIJB, said Edinburgh “has a problem in terms of harmful drug use,” adding the authority should be “supporting those individuals and supporting their health”.
He said: “And I know there will be concerns – but that’s why we need to have the consultation.”
Recently published figures show there were 92 drug deaths in Edinburgh in 2024, the lowest number since 2020, down from 111 in 2023 and 113 the year before.
But speaking to The Herald, Annemarie Ward, an internationally recognised addiction expert and CEO of Faces and Voices of Recovery UK, said opening an injecting facility in Edinburgh is not the key to reducing these numbers further. She pointed out suspected drug deaths in Glasgow rose by a third since the Thistle opened.
“This has been sold very much, whether they say it is or not, as a silver bullet,” she said.
“Drug consumption rooms don’t reduce overall drug deaths at a population level, they stop people from dying inside a facility, but the evidence they save lives across the city is really thin and contested.”
Ms Ward, who is herself a former addict, said the focus on drug consumption rooms shows how the local authority’s priorities are “completely upside-down”.
“Edinburgh has just cut recovery workers and rehab access is really patchy, so proposals for a high-cost niche DCR land at the same time as basic recovery services are being hollowed-out,” she said. “And if the political will and cash exists, why not put it into rehab and housing and community recovery things that benefit thousands, not just a handful.
(Image: Annemarie Ward)
“We’re sending the wrong signal. Communities are being told they must accept a facility that normalises public injecting while the basics, like cleaning up paraphernalia and supporting families and funding recovery and housing, just get completely ignored.”
She said an injecting facility in Edinburgh “may save somebody from dying in that building, but it won’t stop the funerals piling up across the city”.
“If Ministers are serious they would put money into treatment, rehab, housing and jobs and real exits – not into PR experiments that sound good but don’t actually shift the numbers.
“We can see that Scotland’s drug deaths are driven by poly drug use, opioids, and benzos and alcohol – not just heroin injections – so drug consumption rooms only target one particular drug, the actual heroin.”
Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Stanford University, said in 2023 it was “hard to conclude whether consumption rooms … are really the answer to rising global drug use rates”.
He said evidence to date was “methodologically weak”, adding: “Supervised drug consumption sites may make a small difference or they may not, especially when compared with better evidenced services [such as treatment with medications and counselling, or provision of naloxone, used to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose] that could be supported with the same money.”
Ms Ward said: “He [Humphreys] is saying unless there’s recovery infrastructure here there is no way that these rooms are not causing more damage.
“They’re not just damaging the addict, they’re damaging the community, the families, the businesses – everything.”
She said addiction by its nature was “uncontrollable and unmanageable,” adding proponents of drug consumption rooms such as the one set up in Glasgow and proposed for Edinburgh “are utterly deluded”.
“There will be people who can’t recover, but if you’re not giving people the opportunity to recover, if you’re only making it safer and easier for them to use drugs then we’re f****d.”
Few people understand the scale of Edinburgh’s drugs crisis better than John Mitchell. He led a team of addiction support workers in the city for 10 years, and before that was a senior social worker specialising in drugs and HIV at HMP Edinburgh. A resident of the Old Town for 35 years, he witnesses drug users injecting in his close on a daily basis. Over the years, he has seen Edinburgh’s drug and addiction crisis steadily worsen.
Asked if he supports a drug consumption room in the Old Town, Mr Mitchell was unequivocal. “Yes,” he said before the question had been put to him fully.
“It saves lives, but – and the big but – is siting it properly. It needs to be sited in places that are not going to come into conflict with residents.
“I’m totally in favour, it will certainly make the health better of the people who are doing the injecting, also it’s not to be underestimated people think that intravenous drug users are experts in injecting and they certainly are not. So, to be actually in a place where they’re able to safely inject and be trained in how to inject safely saves lives, it also is healthier so in the long run it saves the NHS money.”
However he told The Herald if it is only open half of the day “it won’t make a great deal of difference” adding it is vital Edinburgh’s centre is “open all day and night” with dedicated teams to clean up any paraphernalia littered around the building and regular police patrols to ensure drug users aren’t injecting in the street.
(Image: Newsquest)
“We have zero policing,” he said. “They don’t increase patrols. We need policing to be able to turn out and harass them if they don’t use it. So it’s a carrot and stick. The police need to be able to say ‘if we catch you, you’re toast’.
“In the last five years there’s been a complete lack of policing, lack of prompt services to allow people to escape from being injecting drug users.
“And if you want residents to be burning the place down then don’t clean up after. The big problem in Glasgow has been the complete lack of understanding by the local authority what an injection centre and the inevitable mess that’s going to cause.”
Above all, Mr Mitchell said, drug consumption facilities “gives us a chance to engage with [users]” and move them towards recovery services. However, the evidence of this happening at The Thistle is so far limited.
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“It can’t just be the consumption room,” he said, “otherwise you’ll get the problems they’ve got in Glasgow. It has to be holistic. I will be far more interested in Glasgow over the next five years to find out how many, out of the total number of heroin users they know of, how many of them die and what age group they’re in. I still think you’re going to find the majority of drug deaths are going to be at home, they’re going to be the over 40s.”
He said it “shouldn’t be seen as a silver bullet”. “The siting of it will be vital, the policing of it will be vital and the services it provides on the social care side will be vital.” But he believes it is “worth having”.
“What’s happening in the Old Town is breach of the peace on a daily basis. We need proper police patrolling – and that costs money, but a lot less than having people in jail and on the NHS with things like hepatitis and HIV, and it will save lives.
“A lot of these people have got partners and often children and animals, so you put all these things together it actually saves the state – us taxpayers – in the long run.
“But it’s a very difficult sell to residents.
The consultation on a drug consumption room in Edinburgh is expected to open for responses in early 2026.
