THE great Thomas Sowell said: ‘The more I study the history of intellectuals, the more they seem like a wrecking crew, dismantling civilisation bit by bit – replacing what works with what sounds good.’ It is a quote that lives permanently in my mind these days, like an earworm, as each week seems to bring fresh evidence of the destructive nature of UK governance.
Sowell’s quote doesn’t quite the fit the decision of the Scottish government to open the UK’s first legal drug consumption room (DCR) in Glasgow: ‘what works’ was abandoned long ago and ‘intellectuals’ is a stretch for those responsible for this almost certainly doomed scheme, but it comes pretty close. The ‘what sounds good’ bit certainly hits the spot.
Supporters of DCRs boast that they will save lives by allowing users to inject their drugs not in rancid alleyways or dank tenement stairwells, where the threat of infection or overdose is high, but in a safe clean space under medical supervision. The ‘stigma’ of drug use will be removed as users are treated with kindness and dignity and helped on to a pathway to recovery.
Something, certainly, must be done and the idea is at least an acknowledgment of the horrendous scale of the problem in Scotland. Three Scots die each day of drug overdoses, the highest rate in Europe. If that is not depressing enough, a recent report found that 1,500 drug-addicted babies were born in Scotland last year. The DCRs could save at least some of these people, it is claimed, and perhaps prevent more babies being born with drug addictions.
What’s not to like? Sadly, just about everything. Drug consumption rooms are a terrible idea that will only lead to more use, more misery and, in the long run, more death.
First, drugs are just as harmful wherever they are taken and sanctioning ‘consumption rooms’ (or ‘shooting galleries’ as some call them) gives the impression that the only danger is unhygienic use – palpably not true. The propagation of this lie removes a major disincentive for people to begin using in the first place.
It also sends the message that illegal drug usage is only a problem to the user, not their family, friends, neighbours or anyone else who happens to get in the way of a drug-addled psychotic. Further, it suggests that the user has no responsibility for their habit or power to stop by themselves. A drug user, by the implication of the DCR, is guilty of nothing except perhaps poor judgment and is not really a criminal at all. This is the ‘stigma’ whose removal the DCR advocates crow about.
Let’s pause and think critically, rather than emotionally. What evidence is there that lives will be saved? That cited by the supporters of DCRs tends to be vague, relating to a small number of not very impressive studies which point to ‘evidence of harm reduction’ without being very specific about what that evidence is. DCRs themselves tend to judge success by the number of people using the service, which is a bit like a high street bookmaker claiming that a thriving betting shop proves they are providing a safe space for gambling.
An example of the statistical sleight of hand employed by DCR supporters can be found in the case of the city of Vancouver. A study reported a 35 per cent reduction in overdose death in the vicinity (500 metres) of a facility after it opened in 2003, which sounds promising. And yet, in the province of British Columbia as a whole, in 2023 a total of 2,511 people died from overdoses (seven a day), the highest figure ever recorded. Among the townships recording the most deaths were Vancouver and Vancouver Island. Plenty of death, then, just not within 500 metres of the DCR.
Then there is the argument that areas where drug usage is rife will be magically sanitised and rendered safe by the users all suddenly congregating happily at the ‘safe’ injecting site and behaving themselves in its vicinity. This is fanciful. Experience of such schemes in Melbourne and elsewhere suggests DCR neighbourhoods become squalid and dangerous. Ask those living near the OnPoint facility in Harlem. Here is one quoted in a New York newspaper: ‘I have witnessed things I’ve never seen before, including brazenly open dealing, people defecating (in broad daylight), users with needles openly injecting drugs . . . within a radius of one block from OnPoint NYC during operating hours.’ Others claim the injecting rooms have drawn more dealers to the neighbourhood, with rows of police vehicles now a regular fixture in what had been a fairly quiet area.
Still, how about that ‘something’ that must be done? I’ve grown weary of pointing out to people that the reason Japan and South Korea have almost no drug problems and hardly any drug deaths is not that they are culturally different but that they have an almost zero tolerance policy. Get involved with drugs in even a seemingly minor way and you will receive no sympathy from the authorities. Indeed, your life prospects will be shattered and you may well find yourself in jail. As an example, famous actors have had their entire back catalogue deleted or their scenes in dramas re-shot after falling foul of drug laws.
It sounds extreme and scary, and it is. And that’s the point. It scares people away from making that poor decision in the first place. The idea of a government-funded safe space where people are allowed to break the law would be incomprehensible to the Japanese. There, the stigma of criminality is alive and well, and society is all the better for it. When the law is broken, people are punished, not rewarded, and in the case of drugs offences that punishment is condign.
Result: almost no one dies lonely miserable deaths in alleyways and stairwells with needles in their arms; the dangerous drug-addled do not wander the streets causing perturbation and despair. Random acts of drug-fuelled violence are almost unheard of.
There is no reason why such a situation shouldn’t obtain in the UK, if we can just get over our addiction (if addiction really exists) to policies that sound good, make those who propose them feel good, and then fail, often making lives immeasurably worse in the process.
There is a better way. It won’t be easy and it won’t produce instant results, though in the long term it would work. But it’s a hard argument to make for politicians hungry for approval and hooked on short term popularity. North of the border only the Scottish Family Party have wholeheartedly and robustly opposed drug consumption rooms. They put it like this: ‘Safer consumption rooms will, in the longer term, lead to more drug abuse, more drug deaths and more fear, hurt, injury, loss and death among the law-abiding citizens who cross their path’.
Indeed.
