Need for drugs checking services 'urgent' as 50% of Scots street drugs contaminated with other substances
Drugs charities have said the need for drugs checking services is “urgent” as new figures show the soaring rate of contaminated substances
New government ministers must “urgently” open and expand drug checking services, charities have said.
Three Scottish drug checking centres are planned but experts say the government must work faster to prevent harm.
Last week the latest RADAR drug use statistics showed half of all drugs tested are contaminated by more than one substance.
One sample contained six different elements.
Risks of contaminated opiate and benzodiazepine supplies and miss-selling of drugs are exacerbating Scotland’s public health emergency, charities said.
“We support it because of how toxic the drugs market actually is, and the fact that people don't have autonomy over their substance use because they just don't know what they're using,” Kirsten Horsburgh of Scottish Drugs Forum said.
The situation has been changing at pace in the last few years.
While contaminants have always been an issue, previously bulking agents such as paracetamol were the most commonly found substances.
Now the situation is more precarious with drugs often featuring as many as three or four other substances - including dangerous synthetic opioids like nitazenes.
As a result, over the past year, Ms Horsburgh said, sudden overdoses have become more common.
“It's unusual for people to be injecting a substance and overdose immediately, but people were being found overdosed with the needle still in their arm, or if they were in the consumption facility, overdosing straight away,” she said.
Under Scottish government plans currently under way, Dundee will host the national lab.
Other services will be point of care drug checking services, where a service user can take their substance to be tested immediately.
Licences have been approved for point of care test services in Glasgow, which will be adjacent to The Thistle safe injecting service, and Aberdeen and Dundee.
A licence for Edinburgh is awaiting approval by the Home Office.
The legislation that allows for drug checking services to operate comes with strict limitations that drugs charities say cause serious concerns.
Delivery is conditional on service users being “dependent” on substances but does not clearly define what “dependent” means in practice.
There are also age limits to the service.
Ms Horburgh added: “The staff are put in a really difficult predicament, because they're then going to have to ask questions to the person about their drug use and make a determination about whether the person's dependent or not.”
She added: “Starting from a place of mistrust and dishonestly is not true harm reduction.”
Emma Crawshaw, of charity Crew 2000, said drug checking is “urgently needed” with broader age limits applied.
She said: “If people have to wait until they are 18 and ‘dependent on drugs’ we risk missing early warnings of changes in the drugs supply, the chance to develop more effective public health responses and, most of all, the opportunity to prevent serious and avoidable harms to individuals of all ages.”
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Scottish Drugs Forum says it wants to see the Dundee service use the same set up as the Welsh WEDINOS service where people can send samples in by post from across Scotland.
Ms Horsburgh says the government should consider other models, such as a mobile van that can perform outreach work.
But speed is of the essence, she added.
“We've all had enough of pilots, especially in a public health emergency to be piloting things that have been well evidenced for decades in other countries, seems a bit backwards,” Ms Horsburgh said.
She added: “If you compare the situation to Covid - another public health emergency - we saw fast tracking of services, investment and all the things lacking from this public health emergency.”
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