Scotland’s health secretary said in October that Glasgow’s drug consumption room had “demonstrably” saved lives. New figures about the Glasgow drug consumption room tell a more complicated story. They were released under freedom of information law.

The Thistle sits in Glasgow city centre. It opened in January 2025 as the first sanctioned safer drug consumption facility in the UK. Service data published by Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership runs to the end of July 2026. It shows how sharply activity at the site has grown since launch.

781 unique service users have registered with the Glasgow drug consumption room since it opened. Of those, 609 are men and 172 are women. Between January 2025 and July 2026, the facility logged 21,171 visits and 14,718 injecting episodes. An injecting episode means a registered user has used a booth to prepare and inject substances they bought elsewhere and brought into the building.

Monthly figures show how quickly demand has risen. In its first full month, the facility logged 336 visits and 268 injecting episodes. By July 2026, that had climbed to 1,499 visits and 1,103 injecting episodes in a single month. That is more than four times the starting figure, reached in a little over eighteen months.

Medical Emergencies Rise as Use of the Glasgow Drug Consumption Room Grows

Visits are not the only thing that has grown. So have medical emergencies inside the facility. The service recorded 194 medical emergencies in total up to July 2026. Staff define these as episodes where a service user needed help after self administering substances on site, ranging from close observation to oxygen or naloxone.

A freedom of information response from the Scottish Government adds detail. It confirms 93 medical emergencies in the facility’s first year, from January 2025 to January 2026. That figure had risen to 171 by May 2026. Staff managed every one of these emergencies. No fatality has been recorded on site.

What the Evidence Actually Shows

The freedom of information request asked the Scottish Government two things. First, for any internal analysis of the impact of the safer drug consumption facility on drug deaths. Second, for the evidence behind Neil Gray’s statement on 27 October that the service had “demonstrably” saved lives.

On the first point, the answer was unambiguous. Officials issued a formal notice under section 17(1) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act. It confirms that no completed internal analysis exists quantifying the impact of the Thistle on drug related deaths. Attributing changes in drug deaths to a single service is complex, the response says, and needs longer term data and independent evaluation.

On the second point, the government did not cite any death data at all. It said Mr Gray’s statement drew on operational data and clinical interventions, namely the emergency figures above. The response admits it cannot precisely quantify lives saved. It argues only that managing high risk incidents without loss of life underpins the statement.

So the claim rests on something narrower than it sounds. It is not evidence that deaths have fallen. It is evidence that staff have not yet lost someone during an emergency inside the building itself. That is a considerably smaller claim than the political language used to describe it.

Cocaine Dominates as Use Patterns Shift Inside the Safer Drug Consumption Facility

Each month, service users declare which substance they plan to use. Cocaine has topped that list every month since the Thistle opened, though the picture has shifted. In January 2025, cocaine made up 84.1% of declared substances, with heroin at 13.4%. By July 2026, cocaine had fallen to 54.2% and heroin had risen to 27.9%. The combined use of heroin and cocaine together, known as a snowball, climbed to 17.9%, its highest recorded level.

An Evaluation of the Facility Still Years Away

Researchers are running an independent study of the Glasgow drug consumption room called ENACT. The team comes from Glasgow Caledonian University and the University of Glasgow, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research. It will look at service delivery, health outcomes for people who inject drugs, the impact on the surrounding community, and cost effectiveness. The Thistle’s own published data says the study runs until April 2029. The Scottish Government’s freedom of information response gives a completion date of September 2029.

Until either date arrives, the public record is limited to the monthly operational data itself. Visits are rising. Injecting episodes are rising. Medical emergencies are rising too, each one so far managed without a death on site. Whether that adds up to lives demonstrably saved, or simply a clearer picture of how much risk now sits at one address, is a question the government itself admits it cannot yet answer.

Source: dbrecoveryresources