Edinburgh drug consumption room 'will benefit city as a whole'
The drug consumption room will potentially be located in the Old Town
A drug consumption room in Edinburgh will ”benefit the city as a whole”, health chiefs have claimed.
A three-month public consultation will be launched on April 1 on plans for the Capital to follow Glasgow's lead in opening a facility where drug-users can consume their own drugs, without being prosecuted, supervised by trained staff who can intervene to prevent an overdose.
The proposal is to site the drug consumption room in the Old Town, around either Spittal Street or Cowgate.
Residents living near Glasgow's Thistle Centre, which has been open for around a year, have complained about a "carpet of drug paraphernalia", including discarded needles and syringes, being found outside the premises. And a drug-related death was reported outside the Thistle on March 8.
But Christine Laverty, chief officer of Edinburgh Health and Social are Partnership (EHSCP), said the drug consumption room would be targeted at those who were already taking drugs in the area.
"I don't believe we're bringing anybody into that area to use, we're actually providing a service for people who are already there."
She said the Old Town had been identified as the most appropriate location for the facility because that was the area which saw the most injecting equipment discarded and where police and ambulance crews were called to most often to deal with potential overdoses.
She said: "The research shows that's where most of the harm from public injecting happens in Edinburgh."
And she added: "We think this would benefit the people of Edinburgh and would reduce not only the drug harms for those people who sadly lose their life through overdose, but also the wider impacts on the public in terms of public injecting and so on."
The EHSCP will need to present a business case to the Scottish Government, and says the drug consumption room would have to be fully funded by the government. It would not open until “well into 2027”.
Ms Laverty said: “It will have a strong clinical team within it, but also we'll be looking to support people to move on and potentially get into treatment plans and ultimately recover.”
She said she had visited the Thistle. “I've been very impressed with what they deliver and how they deliver it. We're not talking about an absolute carbon copy of the Thistle, but we have been taking on board having a strong clinical team, potentially working with the third sector and other things.
“We know that there is some public injecting, which is really risky, in disused bits of land in Edinburgh, which is not good for the person who's injecting, but also if they'e leaving discarded needles around.
“This is a service that, if people plan to continue to use drugs and to inject, will provide clean works, new injecting equipment, which will reduce the risks for that individual, but also any risks if anything was discarded.
“We believe this will reduce the risks and reduce the harm. There's a lot of international research that shows that these types of service do save lives.”
The consultation will run for 13 weeks, from Wednesday 1 April 2026 until Wednesday 1 July 2026. There will also be drop-in events, where people will be able to read information about the planned drug consumption room, ask questions of officers involved in the project, then share their views either by speaking to other officers who will take a note of their feedback or filling in the online survey.
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