Professor John Robertson OBA
From US-based international news agency CNN today, the above and:
“We’ve had almost 2,500 injections inside the facility,” Dr. Saket Priyadarshi, the clinical lead of the Thistle, told a CNN team who visited the facility in early June. “That’s 2,500 less injections in the community, in parks, alleyways, car parks.”
The Scottish government told CNN that the service has already delivered results in terms of public health.
“Through the ability of staff to respond quickly in the event of an overdose, the Thistle service has already saved lives,” Scottish health secretary Neil Gray said. The service, he said, is “helping to protect people against blood-borne viruses and taking used needles off the street.”
The idea itself is not new.
The world’s first safer drug consumption room opened in Switzerland in 1986 -– a clinical counterpoint to street-level chaos. Since then, the model has spread across Europe, from Portugal and the Netherlands to Germany, Denmark and Spain, and beyond to Canada and New York City.
Still, resistance remains. CNN spoke to several people in the area who were concerned about the facility’s opening and said it had encouraged more drug users to come to the area in the six months since opening.
Others, however, told CNN that they had noticed there were fewer needles and less discarded drug paraphernalia on the ground since the clinic opened.
Regular critic, herself in recovery, Annemarie Ward, does get several paragraphs but what’s different here, to most Scottish media coverage, is the reference to Europe-wide research in favour of these facilities, an expert medic and the SNP health secretary being able to provide the numbers and no space for the likes of Jackie Baillie to muddy the waters.
Most striking is that CNN have found some locals saying there are fewer needles lying around. You have to wonder how they did that when BBC Scotland, STV, the Herald, the Scotsman and the Daily Record can only ever find folk saying the opposite. Does this mean that the CNN journalists are better or worse at their jobs than their Scottish equivalents?
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Contrast journalism from CNN to the agitprop news manipulation from “Scotlands” colonial media.
gavinochiltree
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The only two news channels I watch are C.N.N and Al Jazeera.
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Democracy Now, is an excellent independent news programme.
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” Most striking is that CNN have found some locals saying there are fewer needles lying around ” – Absolutely not true BBC ‘shitehawk’ have been recorded on outside broadcast pursuing the ‘right’ response for hours starring the shitehawk in person.
CNN journalistic integrity was never in question, neither was James Cook’s stage management of this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF87Nd5ghZQ
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Last Saturday’s Herald Magazine had a big article on this very subject. Tried reading it but gave up. They seemed to be going all round the houses rather than admit it had some merit. At least that’s how it seemed on my brief reading of it.
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OK, I have now read the article in the Herald Magazine and it is a bit more balanced than it first seemed when I skimmed part of it last week. Does not reach an overall conclusion but does highlight some of the misinformation that has circulated about the centre.
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