The pilot scheme will be located at a health centre in the east of Glasgow and is funded by the Scottish government as part of a wider strategy to address the country’s drug death crisis. At the facility, people who use drugs will be able to consume their own substances, including heroin and cocaine, under the supervision of health professionals. Due to legal issues concerning the Scottish anti-smoking legislation, and ventilation and filtration-related challenges, the proposal for a room where clients can smoke illegal substances has been removed from the original proposal for now.

Hopes are that the consumption site will be open by the coming summer and run for an initial three years. Plans to open such a project have been on the way in the past years, and the final steps towards their realisation became possible after Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain KC announced earlier in September that it would not be in the public interest for people using a pilot Safer Drug Consumption room to face prosecution for possession within the facility.