Glasgow drug users and MP hail ‘lifesaving’ van that defies UK law
It’s lunchtime on a sunny Friday and there are two queues on Glasgow’s Parnie Street. At Street Level Photoworks gallery, one group waits to enter an exhibition of the work of Oscar Marzaroli, famous for photographing the city’s postwar working classes amid social upheaval and division. Opposite, a line forms outside a white Ford Transit van emblazoned with “Safe Consumption” as some of the city centre’s drug-dependent population wait for access to take illegal drugs.
“It’s a lifesaver,” says one visitor to the van, which is kitted out with sterile seat and table covers, needle bins, injecting kits and Naloxone, used to reverse the effects of overdose. “Without it I’d be using a dirty alley and stepping all over broken glass and old needles.”
A friend of his recently overdosed around the corner and had to be saved, he adds, pointing to an alleyway where a 17-year-old girl also died days earlier: “Why can they not just make this van legal?”
The question is a complicated one that has been at the centre of efforts to curb fatalities in the city, dubbed Europe’s drug deaths capital. Scotland’s drugs death rate is three times higher than that in any EU country, with the majority of fatalities occurring in Glasgow.
While the city council, backed by the Scottish government, has long called for the establishment of supervised drug consumption facilities in the city, these are interpreted as contravening the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and have therefore been repeatedly blocked by the Home Office.
“My plan is to push the boundaries so that an official facility where people can get proper help and support becomes inevitable,” says Peter Krykant, a former drug addict who set up the van earlier this year.
While it ensures a clean environment safer than the street, an official facility could provide services such as wound care, signposting and treatment. “This is not a magic wand and I can’t do this forever; it’s about forcing the change.” Krykant risks arrest by operating the van, which exists in a grey area of the law: while selling or assisting in the procurement or preparation of illegal drugs is an offence, users of the van bring their own substances and prepare them alone.
“People in Glasgow recognise the issues that the city faces with regards to drug injecting and drug-related deaths, and it’s scandalous the Home Office continue to reject public health interventions like the implementation of supervised drug consumption facilities,” says Alison Thewliss, the SNP MP for Glasgow Central.
“In the absence of support from the UK government, it’s hardly surprising that some have taken the matter into their own hands. However, it shouldn’t be the case that citizens have to take risks due to the failings of UK government ministers.”
The Home Office says its approach to drugs “is clear”.
“We have no plans to introduce drug consumption rooms and anyone running them would be committing a range of offences including possession of a controlled drug and being concerned in the supply of a controlled drug,” said a spokesperson.
But for people like William, 48, who exits the van after injecting cocaine, the facility is the difference between dignity and stigma – and life and death.
“It’s a great thing he’s doing here,” he says of Krykant. “People keep dying in alleys and they’re going to take drugs whether you like it or not. Here it’s safe and it’s clean and you can get a hit in private without the police or strangers walking by. Of course it should be allowed. Either you want people to die or you don’t.”
