‘Drug use is a health problem’: inside one of the world’s oldest legal consumption rooms

At Quai 9 in Geneva, safe equipment and healthcare have cut overdoses and illnesses among addicts. But around the world, opinion is divided on whether such projects really work

In a lime-green room behind Geneva’s main train station, a man is slumped over a chair, the heroin he has just injected taking effect. Around him, a handful of others are in the process of reaching that same state of bliss: administering bands to their arms to produce a vein, unpeeling plastic-clad syringes, exhaling as the needle goes in. Some will return later today – maybe a handful of times – to get their hit at one of the oldest supervised drug consumption rooms in the world, where users can take their own illicit substances without fear of prosecution.

A state-provided supply of safe injecting equipment, along with tea, croissants and hot showers, may seem an unusual way to handle a citywide drug epidemic, but Geneva’s Quai 9 facility – which turned 20 this year – may well provide a blueprint for Britain. In September, it was announced that the UK’s first legal consumption room is to open in Glasgow, a city in a country with higher fatal overdose rates than anywhere in Europe; deaths caused by drug poisoning in Scotland are 2.7 times higher than the UK average. First proposed seven years ago, the site – five minutes from the city centre’s main drag, by a Morrison’s and a pram shop – will cost £7m to build.