Plans for safe drug consumption room in Edinburgh enter next stage as consultation approved
The consultation on a safe drug consumption room in Edinburgh will be held early next year.
A public consultation on a safe drug consumption room for Edinburgh has been approved, with the city’s health board chair saying the facility would save lives if introduced.
Councillors and other members of the Edinburgh Integration Joint Board (EIJB) signed off on the consultation on Monday, with officers set to have it ready for early 2026.
Once the consultation is live, likely for a three-month run, members of the public will be asked about the room – including where in the Old Town it should be located.
The Cowgate or Spittal Street had previously been identified by the EIJB as potential sites.
Board chair and Labour councillor Tim Pogson said: “We all recognise that Edinburgh has a problem in terms of harmful drug use. We should be supporting those individuals and supporting their health. And I know there will be concerns – but that’s why we need to have the consultation.
“We need to understand all the issues and talk them through, and get the best outcome we can for all of this.”
Cllr Pogson said no specific sites had been identified yet, but that efforts would be made to pair the consumption room with other existing services.
In a report circulated ahead of the meeting, it was suggested the site could be co-located with a homeless day service or an opiate replacement therapy centre. The report said the site would be open seven days a week, and between eight and twelve hours a day. Nurses would be on site to supervise users as they inject, or possibly inhale, drugs.
Other staff at the consumption room would be on hand to offer support to users, including signposting for services which may be useful to them. The report said the site could include a drug checking service, as well as take home kits of naloxone - a drug which can reverse an opioid overdose.
Along with facilities for injecting, and possibly inhaling, drugs, the consumption room would also include clinics to tackle other health issues users might also face. These include wound care, infectious diseases, and sexual health, and possibly also screening and management for chronic diseases.
If built, Edinburgh’s safe consumption room would be the second in Scotland, after the Thistle site in Glasgow. The plans in the report are modelled off the Thistle consumption room, as well as the Merchant’s Quay consumption room in Dublin.
Safe consumption rooms have existed in Europe since the 1970s, with legally sanctioned ones coming into place in the 1980s.
At the Monday board meeting, members widely supported the consumption room, but had clarifying questions about how planning for it had progressed so far.
Patricia Cantley, an NHS Lothian member of the board, asked about people outside of Edinburgh using the service, and if other nearby local authorities were being consulted.
Citizen member Eugene Mullan asked about the timescale with which the consultation could be delivered, and when a consumption room could be in place by.
Andrew Hall, strategic planning officer, said a consultation could get underway in the new year with ‘fair wind’, but that it would be over a year until a room could be put in place.
He said data analysis of consultation responses, gathering funding, satisfying legal requirements and selecting a site, among other tasks, would take time.
Members of the board verbally agreed to proceed with the consultation, without any changes to the recommendations made by officers.
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