At first glance, the row of booths could be mistaken for a chorus line dressing room. There are eight in all; each with its own strip-lighting, giant mirror and packet of wipes. But the yellow bins betray the true purpose. They are there for the disposal of used syringes at the UK’s first sanctioned safer drugs consumption facility. The last time I stood in a space set aside for the supervised injection of Class A drugs, it was in the back of a converted ambulance parked on a rundown road in Glasgow city centre. Run by an activist, Peter Krykant, the vehicle – illegal and unsanctioned – was a provocation to Westminster and Holyrood to address Scotland’s spiralling drug deaths. The rate per capita is the worst in Western Europe.
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