Safety minister to visit drug rehab project

Community Safety Minister Roseanna Cunningham will find out today how a drug rehabilitation project has been working to reduce fatal overdoses.

Roseanna Cunningham will visit Glasgows New Horizon community rehabilitation service. Picture: Phil Wilkinson

Ms Cunningham will visit Glasgow’s New Horizon community rehabilitation service as new figures on the national naloxone programme are published.

Scotland was the first country in the world to announce it was setting up such a scheme in November 2010, with thousands of naloxone kits distributed since then.

The drug can save comatose heroin addicts with a single injection, with the special kits given to the family, friends or carers of addicts, as long as consent is given by the person who is deemed to be at risk.

The New Horizon service was one of the first groups in Scotland to set up a naloxone peer education group, as part of a Scottish Drugs Forum initiative.

This involves people who have previously had substance abuse problems training drug users, their friends and relatives in overdose prevention and how to administer naloxone if someone does take an overdose.

Figures published last year showed that across Scotland, a total of 3,445 naloxone kits were distributed in the first year of the programme.

Ms Cunningham has previously stressed that while naloxone is not the solution to drug-related deaths, it is an “important intervention which can and does save lives”.