Transform is delighted to see the UK’s first Safer Drug Consumption Facility SDCF (aka Overdose Prevention Centre etc) open in Glasgow on the 13th January. Congratulations to all our colleagues north of the border for the hard work they’ve put into finally making this happen, including the ground-breaking work of Peter Krykant and his unofficial mobile facility.

I’m really proud of all Transform has done, over the last decade in particular, to help Scottish service providers, policy makers, activists, families and police get to this point. Transform first called for supervised drug consumption facilities in the UK twenty years ago, and has been working extensively, bringing people together and supporting them nationally and internationally - often below the radar - to get these facilities open not just in Scotland but across the UK.

There is not enough space here to outline most of the work we have done to build support in the UK but to give you a taste this includes visiting and sharing experiences of SDCFs all over the world; taking UK police and Police and Crime Commissioners along with film crews to visit them; giving written and oral evidence to numerous Government committees and enquiries, organising and chairing meetings between UK police with German and Australian counterparts to learn how to manage them; supporting and educating treatment groups and policy makers; supporting Anyone’s Child families in telling their stories and making their case for drug consumption rooms and proactively engaging the media, including through a national tour of public meetings with Peter Krykant’s Overdose Prevention Service ambulance.

With around 200 similar facilities in 20 countries globally, some operating for decades, the evidence they save lives, reduce street injecting and discarded needles, and help get people into health, welfare and treatment services has been clear for many years. So, while we welcome a SDCF finally opening in the UK, we also mourn all those lost and harmed unnecessarily by the inexcusable delays to getting these essential facilities in place - not just in Scotland, but across the UK. As so many of our Anyone's Child families have said, their loved ones would still be alive today if only they had been able to use in a supervised drug consumption facility, not alone in a backstreet or behind the locked door of a public toilet.

Heads should be hung in shame where those delays are the result of ideological or even cynical politically motivated opposition. Policy makers, particularly in Westminster, despite understanding the evidence, have still been willing to sacrifice the lives of people who use drugs. Whether to score political points or curry favour with certain parts of the media for their own gain.

This new service in Glasgow will be the first of many I’m sure, and should be seen as a watershed moment ushering in a new era of a pragmatic, effective and health-centred approach to drugs. I’m optimistic it won’t take so long for the next one to open. This, of course, won’t happen on its own, but what Glasgow’s achievement shows is that between all the individuals and organisations who care, we can deliver real change when we work together - even if it is a hard slog, it's worth it in the end.

With record levels of drug deaths across the UK, and the ever increasing threat of super-potent synthetic opioids, it is long overdue for politicians at all levels - local, regional, in devolved governments, and in Westminster, to move on from demonstrably failed and counterproductive drug war posturing. Instead they must acknowledge there is no enforcement-led solution to drugs issues, and move decisively towards an effective, compassionate and above all, cost-effective, health-led approach to drugs. Something that will benefit everyone in society.

Martin Powell

Head of Partnerships