Ongoing discussions between Belfast City Council and the north’s Attorney General over the introduction of a new facility to reduce drug overdoses have been described as “positive”.
A Green Party motion to support the establishment of an overdose prevention facility (OPF) in the city was passed unanimously by councillors last March.
Such a facility would allow addicts to take drugs in a hygienic environment and provide early intervention and other services to help wean users off substances.
At last week’s full council meeting, Green Party councillor Brian Smyth commended the local authority for agreeing to his proposal to write to the Public Prosecution Service and Stormont’s health and justice departments on the matter, as continuing conversations with Attorney General Brenda King.
“Moves are in place in Scotland for the introduction of such a facility in Glasgow. We need to ask our Public Prosecution Service is it really in the public interest to arrest a person found with a small amount of drugs for their personal use who would be seeking to use such a facility?” Mr Smyth said.
He said such arrests “continues the cycle of the most vulnerable and desperate being criminalised, put through prisons that are themselves overrun with drugs, and coming back into society without any meaningful chance to get clean and break the cycle of addiction”.
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Mr Smyth referred to recent drug death figures that show almost a “100% increase” across the last decade. Northern Ireland has the second highest rate of drugs-related deaths in the UK, at 11.5 per 100,000 people, which is just behind Scotland.
In order for an OPF to operate in the north, legislative change would be required as the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 currently criminalises possession of any proscribed substance.
Scotland’s Lord Advocate, the equivalent of the NI Attorney General, has recently said she will introduce policy for prosecutors to the effect that it would not be in the public interest to prosecute drug users for simple possession offences within a pilot safer drugs consumption facility.
At a committee meeting last month Belfast City Council’s City Solicitor, Nora Largey, said the council was “advocating for that” to “promote a dispensation from drug laws which currently makes the operation of those premises illegal”.
The Attorney General met Belfast City Council chief executive John Walsh and Ms Largey on January 15.
“It was a positive meeting but there is more to be done in terms of opening up what an overdose prevention facility would essentially look like, and identifying some of the issues and how to overcome those. There will be further discussions to be had on that,” Ms Largey said.
“We also took that opportunity to advise the Attorney General about the important work the council is doing in respect of complex lives, and trying to help people who are unfortunately caught in that cycle of addiction.”
A further update report on the ongoing discussions will be presented to the council later this year.
