Why has it taken the SNP so long to act on Scotland’s drug deaths?

Britain’s first ‘drug consumption room’ will get the go-ahead later today. A health centre in the east end of Glasgow (where nearly 200 people died from drugs last year) is expected to be used for a pilot project. It will offer nurse-led supervision for drug users while they take heroin, cocaine and other illegal drugs. Sterile needles will be provided too. The NHS and Glasgow City Council, who proposed the scheme, hope that the ‘400 to 500 people [regularly] injecting drugs in public places in Glasgow’ will move off the streets and into the consumption room.

The SNP have pushed the idea for years but it was repeatedly blocked by the Westminster government as drugs law is reserved. The scheme is possible now because Scotland’s Lord Advocate – the equivalent of England’s attorney general and director of public prosecutions rolled into one – has ruled that drug users would not be prosecuted for taking drugs within government-backed consumption rooms.