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In the Herald today:
The UK’s only drug consumption room has been branded a “failed experiment” as the Scottish Government faces calls to shut down the facility. The Thistle, based on Hunter Street in the east end of Glasgow, opened in January last year and has been accessed more than 11,000 times.
Who says it has failed and should be closed? Annie Wells of the Scottish Cons of course.
She claims:
Why is she and they all wrong on this? First on the local residents:
Residents living near the Thistle safe drug consumption facility in Glasgow pay only a TENTH of the bill for removing discarded needles after it opened than they did before it opened to further expose BBC Scotland’s bias by selection
Thanks to L for providing this convincing and objective evidence, that Thistle facility has not increased the number of dangerous discarded needles in the surrounding area. They write:
I emailed you in June to advise you of the impact the Thistle appears to be having on the flat. As I previously stated the main chat on the WhatsApp group for owners and tenants was about discarded needles , drug paraphernalia, drug dealing and anti social behaviour.
You will recall that we spent £2,500 for the 6 months prior to the Thistle opening too pay for discarded needles and drug paraphernalia etc to be removed. I now have the invoice for the period January 2025- August 2025 which backs up the chat from the WhatsApp group and the bill for removing discarded needles etc is £240 for 2 occasions. Way down from £2,500 and on 18 occasions.
The only thing in the area that has changed is that the Thistle has opened and in my opinion this has confirmed that apart from reducing drug related deaths etc the area aground the flat has been cleaned up with the area much safer now and less police time being taken up.
In June 2025, I wrote:
A source with a flat in a block 10-15 minutes from the the United Kingdom’s first Safer Drug Consumption Facility, The Thistle, in Glasgow, has a very different story to tell from that gathered by BBC Scotland, based on one group of residents, suggesting a counter-intuitive increase in drug taking and anti-social behaviour near the facility.
Multiple research studies across Europe have clearly demonstrated significant reductions in drug deaths and crime around more than 300 such facilities, over the last 7 years: https://gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2019-01/180320atisn12038doc2_0.pdf
You have to wonder just how BBC Scotland managed to find evidence contrary to these multiple research reports. Makes you wonder if they have a political agenda and complete disregard for the truth.
In July 2025, from US-based international news agency CNN:
“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?
Second drug deaths?
Professor John Robertson OBA
Any fool can see from the above line graph what the trend is and despite the ups and downs, Scotland’s suspected drugs deaths are falling. From nearly 1 500 per year at the end of 2020 to just over 1 000 in the last 12 months, a 33% fall in only 5 years. The bar chart also show the usual seasonal fall from a winter peak.
From Suspected drug deaths in Scotland: July to September 2025 published yesterday:
There were 898 suspected drug deaths, 8% (65) greater than during the same period of 2024 (833).
Note that numbers of suspected drug deaths fluctuate from quarter to quarter. Care should be taken not to interpret movements between individual calendar quarters as indicative of any long-term trend.
There were 1,130 suspected drug deaths over the 12 months to September 2025, the same number as were recorded over the 12 months to September 2024.
https://www.gov.scot/publications/suspected-drug-deaths-scotland-july-september-2025/pages/3/
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Talking-up Scotland 
Annie Wells “says”……..
I mean who wants to listen to her , and then upon doing so , feels what ?
Still unenlightened and uninspired.
She’s another one , like Murdo Fraser, that never gets the people’s vote , but still she manages to make money from a parliament that she (and he) have contributed nothing of any real substance to , as both she and his (Murdo’s) political contributions have mainly consisted of a succession of grievances against the SNP……….and also against Scottish independence.
They, as branch office Tories, assume (wrongly) that they can hold their political heads up high, as if somehow Tory HQ (past and present) have been beyond reproach…….
The distance from Tory HQ, in geographical mileage, to the Tory branch office does not then make them, the Tory branch office, exempt from criticism as part of that same Tory party.
Who among them at the Scottish branch office voted for Johnson and Truss as Tory HQ’s former leaders ……so they too , as the Tory branch office, must also share the accountability that both of their, Johnson & Truss, failed and disastrous Tory HQ leaderships and premierships ended in.
Newspapers who headline anything Annie Wells states should then also be implicated as those who should then be seen as complicit , so then they are also culpable for all the mess, fiasco, catastrophe and the too many scandals linked to and associated with the Tory HQ party who governed the UK State from WM. (They , as a media, are now doing the same with Labour as the new UK government).
We need less Annie Wells and less Murdo Fraser’s types in our parliament and more of those types of politicians who at least want to Talk Scotland Up, as opposed to incessantly feeling compelled to Talk Scotland Down just to try and save their UK State.
A negative anti Scottish narrative via an assortment of pro UK branch office parties , who all sit in our Scottish parliament, where their various pro UK and anti Scottish messages are then willingly and constantly transmitted or published by their politically compromised mainstream media conspirators.
Liz S
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Wells complained when her addicted friends did not get enough treatment. They get it now. Now she’s complains for the facilities to be closed down,
The Scottish Gov is funding proper rehab facilities £250Million over 5 years. More places for people to get well. Wells is not delighted. Complains again.
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