Annemarie Ward Slams Glasgow Drug Room "A Measure of Absolute Failure" at Heated Public Meeting
Campaigner blasts £48m harm reduction strategy as locals demand real recovery solutions in Glasgow’s East End.
By Gary Fanning
Campaigner Annemarie Ward led emotional calls for action last night as furious Calton residents demanded Scotland’s First Minister confront the fallout from the country’s first Drug Consumption Room.
Speaking at a packed public meeting just a few hundred metres from the £2.3 million “Thistle” facility in Glasgow’s East End, the FAVOR UK chief executive said local people were being treated with “utter contempt” and warned that the community’s suffering was being ignored in favour of political agendas.
Around 90 residents packed into St Luke’s Wedding Venue on Bain Street for the two-hour meeting, voicing fears over rising crime, discarded needles, and open drug use in streets once filled with children and families.
Ms Ward said it had been a failed response and a failed policy, pointing out that of the £50 million treatment budget in Glasgow, only £1.3 million is spent on rehab and £300,000 on Recovery Hubs—while the other £48 million is spent on harm reduction interventions.
She added: “The response has been harm reduction rather than recovery. The intention with this room is to open others like it across the country.
“It’s a wee bit like give them an inch and they’ll take a mile.
“It is a measure of absolute failure.
“And I am sick of saying and repeating the same things over and over again.
“The £48 million spent on harm reduction interventions isn’t treatment. Clean needles to take drugs isn’t treatment. You are bringing people into the system but you’re not giving them a way out. We need to give people a way out.
“I’m not saying we need to stop harm reduction interventions. But I am saying we need to balance the system.
“And it’s not difficult to do that. The philosophy of harm reduction has taken over rather than the philosophy of recovery. We need to have people able to access services that can get them clean.
“We are here to ask for help for our daughters and sons, our nieces and nephews, and their aunties and uncles.
“We’re just asking for treatment to help people get clean.”
Ms Ward has lobbied councillors and MSPs and brought the Right to Recovery Bill to the Scottish Parliament.
She added: “It would give them treatment they can’t access just now. How can that not be a good idea?
“There are charities out there, but they are not independent charities—they are all paid for by the Scottish Government. So he who pays the piper plays the tune. The whole system is rigged.
“They’ve brought in a whole load of people to give evidence against this Bill.”
And she told the meeting: “I don’t have any fight left in me. I really don’t. Everything has been a fight.”
National Records of Scotland (NRS) data for 2023 revealed that 1,172 people died from drugs—up 121 on the previous 12 months, which represents a 12% increase.
During the same year, there were 303 suspected drug deaths in Greater Glasgow, a rise of 41% from the previous year’s figure of 214.
“Scotland is top of the league when it comes to drug deaths,” she said.
“It doesn’t have to be that way. There are enough people in Scotland who have the expertise to help turn this around. They’re just not investing in them or their organisations.
“Drug consumption rooms give the illusion of compassion. It is not compassionate to watch somebody use drugs and not offer them a way out. In fact, it is immoral.”
And Annemarie added: “When people get well and into recovery, they can contribute and be productive members of society again.
“In fact, a lot of us actually give back more than what we took out of society.
“We’re allowed to say that because when we’re in addiction, we are absolute blights on our families’ lives and on our communities as well.
“And it is not untrue or stigmatising to say that. It is a horrendous illness—or condition, or whatever you want to believe it is.
“When we are in it, we are completely in it. We are completely selfish, self-centred and self-seeking.
“But when we get out of it, we can contribute massively to our communities rather than being a drain on them.
“The Drug Deaths Taskforce, which was set up in 2019 to supposedly respond to this, was made up of pharmacists and doctors.
“We argued right from the beginning to have 50% representation from people who had recovered.
“Unless your expertise is made up like someone like me—someone who understands how you recover from this...
“If you keep putting pharmacists and doctors at the head of this—and we do need pharmacists and doctors to help us—but if you keep weighting everything in that direction, you’re not going to get people out the other side.
“At the end of that Taskforce’s life, three years later, £40 million down—most of it spent on research. Research about addiction.
“We’re studying recovery. People like Francis have recovered. Why are you not studying the solution?
“Why keep studying the problem? Because these professionals are like turkeys who won’t vote for Christmas when it comes to our Bill.
“They cannot get out of their comfort zone. They won’t even engage with us or our lived experience. At the end of three years, that Taskforce was shut down.
“They say in their final report that abstinence-based treatment was stigmatising. To ask people to do that was stigmatising. I couldn’t believe it when I read it. I thought—what happened here?
“They’re now saying that to ask people who are ill—and who are making their families and communities ill—is stigmatising?
“To ask them to get clean and sober?
“That’s how far away we’ve moved.
“We’ve been saying since 2019 that we’re in crisis. And I see the same people in charge of this still in charge.
“I see the same people and the same organisations—£12 million spent on the organisations I’ve mentioned. That’s just at first glance—there’s a lot more than that. Over 200 staff on those quangos, and these aren’t treatment organisations. These are academics calling themselves policy actors.
“They are not delivering frontline services. They are putting on conferences and talking to journalists and creating reports and doing nice kid-on consultation exercises.
“And you were part of it.
“The outcome was already there before anyone came along with a lanyard and told you this was going to be great for your community.
“It is not great.
“There is a Stanford University report from December 2024, and umpteen reports that tell you these rooms cause devastation in communities. Crime rates rise—not just theft. Businesses suffer. Sexual violence goes up. Prostitution goes up. Drug use goes up. House prices go down.
“The evidence is really clear across the world on these rooms.
“They are a disaster. Portugal is shutting them down. Vancouver is shutting them down.
“Oregon is shutting them down.
“Glasgow is opening them.
“If you don’t believe me, look at Keith Humphreys’ report in the Pacific Northwest Drug Policy. It’s all there.
“He is a Stanford University scholar saying that this is a humanitarian disaster.
“We deserve better, right?”
That final line was met with huge applause from the crowd.
This is the third in our series today from last night’s meeting in Carlton.
Tomorrow in the Splash, the people of Calton will be heard.
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