OFFICIALS at a Scottish council have identified two sites for a potential second drugs consumption room.
A report released by the Edinburgh City Council's Integration Joint Board (IJB) revealed the facility could open on the Cowgate or on Spittal Street, both in the city’s Old Town.
The IJB also said it would design a consultation which would run in the new year to garner the views of locals on the proposals.
If such a facility – which allows those addicted to intravenous drugs to inject under the supervision of medical professionals – were to open, it would be the second in Scotland, following on from the Thistle Centre in Glasgow.
The proposed facility, according to the report, would be located either in the same building as, or very near to, a homeless day centre or service providing treatment for drug addiction.
In the past three years, the IJB said, there had been 36 drug related deaths within a 15-minute walk of Spittal Street and 34 in the same distance from the Cowgate.
It is not yet possible to estimate the cost of the project until a final site is identified.
The consultation, which will likely be held early next year, would inform a business case for the facility to be put to the Scottish Government for final approval.
IJB chief officer Christine Laverty wrote: “Such a public consultation will attract substantial attention and raise both hopes and fears within different communities.”
The initial consumption room in Glasgow faced an uphill political struggle for over a decade before it was opened. The UK Government refused to provide a waiver to the Misuse of Drugs Act, which would ensure users would not be criminalised.
It was only when Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain KC said it would not be in the public interest to prosecute service users that the path was cleared for the Thistle to open in January.
As of the end of June, the service had been used 3554 times to inject by 377 different people. It has dealt with 48 different medical emergencies, some of which, drugs minister Maree Todd told journalists last month, would have resulted in the death of the user had they been unsupervised.
