Your say / drugs
‘By working together, we can save lives through making Bristol a city of harm reduction’
As someone who has been bereaved through drug overdose poisoning, I’m acutely aware that the number of overdose deaths nationwide and in Bristol have risen every year since 2010 – four years before my own partner, Jake Coe, became one of those statistics.
In 2024, seven people died in Bristol and the surrounding area every month. Many of these deaths were preventable.
That’s why I, on behalf of the Green councillor group, am bringing a motion to full council calling for Bristol to be an official city of harm reduction.
is needed now More than ever
A harm reduction approach acknowledges that we can’t stop people from taking drugs (including alcohol), so we need to find ways to make it safer.
Currently, anyone who wants to access illicit drugs can do so within a relatively short space of time, either online or in person.
Residents in my ward know perfectly well where the local drug dealing hotspots are and often ask why the police don’t act on this information. At the same time, they understand the concept of the children’s game whack-a-mole.
As soon as one drug dealer is caught, another springs up in their place.
I know that residents in many of our communities struggle with witnessing open drug use and the drug detritus that is often left behind.
In one week in March in east Bristol, I witnessed three different episodes of people injecting themselves with drugs in broad daylight. All of these took place within 150 metres of a primary or secondary school.
Studies show that more than 70 per cent of people who inject drugs experienced severe childhood trauma: domestic violence, neglect, sexual and emotional abuse.
Drug use often begins as a form of self-medication for people to manage the fallout from that trauma.
About half of drug overdose poisonings involve opioids, though a recent report said the figure could be much higher, due to the fast-increasing prevalence of synthetic opioids, such as nitazenes and orphines, in the illicit drug supply.
These drugs are up to 500 times stronger than heroin and just a trace amount can be lethal. A fatal dose can be so small that many coroners also believe they are not being included in drug overdose figures.
‘Harm reduction’ means treating drugs and drug users medically.
It is a compassionate approach that has been proven to save lives and improve health outcomes far more effectively than criminalisation, or the threat of it, does.
There is good work going on in Bristol, including by the Bristol Nights project, but it happens slowly and it requires multi-agency collaboration.
Night time economy venues, the police, student organisations, drug treatment providers and public health all need to work together to bring about small changes.
The way the Misuse of Drugs Act is applied often works against these health-based changes.
Bristol’s monthly drug checking facility and the police’s drug diversion schemes have put our city firmly on the map as a leading light in harm reduction – and make us a beacon for other cities in the UK and beyond.
To take this further, the Green Party would like to see an enhanced and co-ordinated approach to addressing drug related issues in Bristol.
We are calling for more frequent drug checking and for safer injecting sites or overdose prevention facilities. These are places where people who inject drugs could go to do so under medical supervision.
There are more than 100 such sites around the world, and no one has ever died while using one.
In addition, many people receive a medical intervention at the time of their drug use, which can lead to further positive health outcomes.
Bristol Central MP Carla Denyer and the leader of the council, Tony Dyer, have both written to the home secretary to request permission to provide an overdose prevention centre but were told this will not be possible under the Misuse of Drugs Act.
They say this even though there is such a facility in Glasgow, which operates under the same laws as Bristol.
In the longer term, a Green government would go much further, with a policy of legalising and regulating drugs.
In recent elections, other political parties have tried to smear this by scaremongering and spreading misinformation about it.
The truth is that in practice, our national policy would tackle our drug problems root and branch rather than tinker around the edges while health and policing costs increase year after year and overdose deaths continue to rise.
The illicit drug market would be decimated as those who need or want drugs could go to doctors or pharmacists and receive a health intervention before being prescribed or buying the drugs they want.
The 50,000 children a year currently exploited by organised crime to sell and transport drugs would be protected.
Billions of pounds could be raised in tax from the sale of less harmful drugs. This would be spent on drug treatment and drug education.
Billions would be saved in NHS, policing and prison costs.
And tens of thousands of lives would be saved as people could access a safe supply of what they need under medical supervision, rather than down dark alleyways and on street corners in a market that encourages pyramid selling and sales calls.
The heart of the matter is that drugs are a health issue, not a criminal one – and it is only by treating them that way, that we can begin to tackle the problems associated with them.
Thousands of families each year should not lose loved ones because they were shamed out of getting the help they desperately needed and the law made them too afraid to ask for it.
I urge the other political parties in Bristol to see the logic and sense in this approach rather than engaging in political scaremongering and to support this motion.
By working together, we can save lives through making Bristol a city of harm reduction.
This is an opinion piece by Cara Lavan, a Green councillor for St George Central
Main photo: Martin Booth
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