|
The number of people starting treatment for ketamine addiction in 2023-2024 reached 3,609 – more than eight times the amount in 2014-15.
JO MOORE
how The Thistle had been set up to offer compassionate and person-centred care to people who inject drugs in Glasgow.
People with lived and living experience had been part of setting up the facility to give a‘ severely marginalised group access to the treatment and support they have been lacking for years’. By the end of October 2025, 494 individuals had used the service more than 8,236 times, with 5,500 injecting episodes. Cocaine had been used in 80 per cent of visits, so the number of medical emergencies( 74) was lower than expected. Priyadarshi hoped that more cities around the UK would follow Glasgow’ s lead by creating similar facilities.
|
PEER-LED NALOXONE The Scottish Drugs Forum( SDF) were also stepping up action on drug-related deaths by working with external partners to support peer supply of naloxone, both in the community and in prison. Peer-to-peer naloxone training was now running in 12 of Scotland’ s 17 prisons.
Responsible for peer-topeer naloxone training at SDF, Emir Taha had lived experience and had seen first-hand how the peer-led initiative gave‘ privileged access, increased reach and instant credibility. When I do outreach, I get the immediate respect and understanding that he’ s not going to dob me into the authorities,’ he said.
Andrew Preston, founder of harm reduction social enterprise Exchange Supplies, spoke of the need for meaningful employment opportunities. When setting up his company, he recruited people he’ d supported as a frontline drug worker in Dorset.‘ If only employers were a little bit more understanding, a little bit more flexible, then there’ s all this talent that could be utilised,’ he said.
There were challenges, he admitted, but the initiative had been‘ super successful’.‘ I always say we’ ve got a ten-year view on it. It may well be that for the first few years things were a bit messy in terms of punctuality and attendance but then you get it all back because people know that you’ re helping them out and they work hard,’ he said.‘ As drug services, we should be employing a lot more people who use drugs.’
Back in 2010, Sian Roberts was struggling to find a way of getting injecting equipment to a service user living in a caravan in rural Wales, with a bus just once a week to the nearest town. She
|
came up with the idea of Spike on a Bike, where colleagues would deliver clean injecting equipment, naloxone and harm reduction advice by motorbike.
Lack of funding and support from commissioners meant the project couldn’ t get off the ground, but a decade later COVID presented another chance.‘ Coming to a needle exchange or a substance use service isn’ t always easy – whether it be stigma or issues with mobility or rurality,’ said Roberts, who’ s now operations manager for Wales-based charity Barod.‘ Spike on a Bike allowed us to level the playing field.’
YOUNG PEOPLE AND NITAZENES Nitazenes have been increasingly present in the drug supply since the Taliban’ s poppy cultivation ban in 2022. Services have responded by increasing naloxone provision, issuing contamination warnings, and providing harm reduction advice around adulterated drugs. Fraser Parry, drugs advocacy and support adviser at Release, talked about a growing population who encounter nitazenes and other synthetic opioids not as contaminants, but as their drug of choice. So‘ we need to think more carefully about how we’ re going to support people and how we’ re going to keep each other safe,’ he said.
There was added concern for young people, who were more likely to buy drugs online and so had easier access to different markets – especially for benzodiazepines. The Benzo Research Project showed that during 2024, 77 out of 144 samples collected from across England, Scotland and Wales that contained a nitazene were marketed as a benzo.
‘ If they’ re just using party drugs and then benzos to come down at the end of the night, they’ re not going to have naloxone because they don’ t think that they’ re encountering any opiates,’ he said, calling for a more targeted approach
|
to educating young people on nitazenes and training them to use naloxone.
RISE IN KETAMINE The number of people starting treatment for ketamine addiction in 2023-2024 reached 3,609 – more than eight times the amount in 2014-15, according to OHID. The likely age range was 16 to 24.
Jo Moore, manager at Birchwood Kaleidoscope House residential detox and rehab facility on the Wirral, hadn’ t encountered a challenge in two decades as big as ketamine – people arriving with extreme and complex health issues such as urinary incontinence, loss of muscle tone and being unable to walk, with some in wheelchairs and in crippling pain. She called for a fundamental change to ketamineonly support services to catch the‘ window of opportunity’ before the body is irreversibly damaged.‘ Early intervention and harm reduction is key,’ she said.
WOMEN’ S SERVICES A theme across sessions was the difficulty women face in accessing services. Vicki Beere, former chief executive of Project 6, had based her PhD on how changes in commissioning processes have impacted the drug and alcohol sector – specifically women’ s access to treatment. Spending time with 30 women with living experience and speaking to commissioners in four different areas, she concluded that many drug and alcohol services were‘ set up for men’.
‘ Women face unique barriers from stigma and judgement from healthcare professionals to experiences of violence, trauma and caregiving responsibilities, which often make it harder to access support,’ she said. Their voices were also missing from policy decisions and service design.‘ Make spaces easier for women to walk into – somewhere women can go and find their community,’ she urged.‘ We really need to be thinking about women’ s health in a much broader way.’
Clare Taylor is chief operating officer, Turning Point
|