18/05/2025
I'm an ex-drugs officer. Here's why we need safe consumption spaces:
MANY years ago, I found myself at the heart of a harrowing investigation into a series of violent sexual assaults terrorising the west end of Glasgow.
These were dark days – a shadow hung over the city and public fear was palpable. During one of these inquiries, I was sent to follow up with a potential witness, an asylum seeker living in the high-rise flats of Knightswood. I had no idea the visit would challenge everything I thought I knew.
As the lift creaked its way up, I grumbled to my colleague. I voiced the frustrations I’d heard – and sometimes echoed – about the “burden” of asylum seekers in our city.
I spoke of homelessness, crumbling infrastructure, and the stranglehold of poverty – real issues that felt neglected. Why, I asked, were we taking in strangers when we had so much to fix here at home.
But when the door opened, the scene that greeted me disarmed me completely. A very modest flat. A warm welcome. A young family. Two daughters, five or six years old and wide-eyed with innocence and joy, offered me tea with shy smiles. There was little English between us but kindness translated easily. There was no resentment, awkwardness or suspicion. Only a warm welcome, simple hospitality and brotherhood.
In that small living room, I not only secured the statement that would help break our case, I found something more profound –humanity, resilience, and grace.
As the interview concluded, I learned something that stopped me in my tracks. The father of that family, the one I had almost dismissed in my ignorance, had risked his life to intervene in a brutal armed sexual assault on a stranger.
His bravery led directly to the identification and arrest of a dangerous predator. He was not just a man surviving a system – he was a man who had perhaps saved someone’s life, and maybe more victims.
I descended in the lift that night a different man. The prejudices I carried up with me didn’t come back down. They were replaced by humility, by admiration and by a sense of shame at how easily I had fallen for a narrative of blame and suspicion.
I had bought into the rhetoric that asylum seekers were freeloaders, scamming our systems, stealing our precious jobs and using up our resources. But no-one uproots their life, leaves everything and everyone they know, to move thousands of miles to a cold, unfamiliar country, where they don’t speak the language – unless they have no choice.
They flee war, persecution and threats to life itself. Sometimes, simply because of their faith or the tribe they happened to be born into. They don’t seek comfort and a free ride – they seek survival.
That experience never left me. But years later, another encounter would stir the same uncomfortable, yet necessary shift in perspective, this time at the Thistle Centre, the UK’s first officially sanctioned Safe Consumption Facility, right here in Glasgow.
Alongside my old colleague, retired inspector Ian Andrew, I visited with more questions than answers. Could this place really make a difference? Could it address the root of addiction, or was it just political posturing?
Was it destined to become part of the problem rather than the solution? How could facilitating the consumption or injection of dangerous substances help the tragic drug death toll on our streets?
What I witnessed was once again profound. My preconceptions, shaped by 54 years of political rhetoric and societal bias, fell away when confronted with reality and facts. The Thistle Centre is not just a facility, it’s a lifeline. A beacon in the darkness for people who have been written off. The truth is, no-one chooses to become dependent on drugs. You don’t choose to inject on the streets.
These are people born into trauma – victims of poverty, abuse, neglect, institutional failure, disability, and unrelenting mental anguish. Drug use for them is not a vice – it’s an escape from a life that was broken long before they reached for the needle. While they are still forced to source corrupt products from criminal gangs and pushers, at least now we are providing an oasis, where no judgement is made, where mutual trust can be nurtured and where the inherent risks of dangerous drug use, such as adverse reaction, overdosing or infection, can be minimalised.
It's a safe haven where, without the terrible pressures of street life, addiction can be relieved for a short respite. Perhaps time enough to see other options and opportunities to change their futures.
Decades of prohibition have failed. Stigma has killed more than any substance ever has. And yet here, in Glasgow, we are finally seeing a different path, one that prioritises compassion over condemnation, care over criminalisation. A place where being unwell doesn’t mean being unwanted.
In that moment, I saw Glasgow differently. Not as a city marred by hardship, but as one defined by courage, solidarity, and the radical act of caring for our most vulnerable.
My experiences with that family in Knightswood and the staff at the Thistle Centre have stayed with me. They shook me awake.
They reminded me of the kind of Scotland I want to be part of – a nation that doesn’t flinch in the face of discomfort, that doesn’t shy away from complexity but leans in with empathy, intelligence, and heart.
I am proud to be Glaswegian. Not just because of where we’ve been, but because of where we are brave enough to go and to lead.
Simon McLean is a retired crime squad and drug squad detective who now campaigns with LEAP Scotland for meaningful drug law reform. He co-hosts the successful true crime podcast Crime Time Inc alongside former deputy chief constable Tom Wood. Both are bestselling authors
This piece was written following a private visit to Glasgow’s new Thistle Centre – the UK’s first official safe consumption facility.
“Privileged insights you get when you ‘walk the beat’. Thanks for sharing”.
“Thank you Simon, this is the Scotland I want to belong to. Kind caring compassionate and hopeful”.
“A descriptive and thought provoking article portraying day to day life as it is for some and normal acceptance of 'it is as it is. Thank you Simon”.
“A brilliant article, thank you. Should be required reading for all”.
“Ha! My first thought too and only word was - Brilliant !”
