The opening yesterday of The Thistle in Glasgow, a Safer Drug Consumption Facility (SDCF), funded by the Scottish Government, is merely the latest piece of evidence that demonstrates the war on drugs really has finished.

At The Thistle people who inject can consume drugs, which have been obtained elsewhere, in the presence of trained health care professionals in a clean and hygienic environment, so as to reduce the risk of overdose, or catching infectious diseases. It’s a recognition that the 400-500 or so people who were injecting drugs in the city centre – and let’s be honest, we’ve all seen that happening – couldn’t be policed into abstinence and that attempts by the criminal justice system to manage them and the various problems they created had simply failed.

Were you really expecting a different outcome? History is filled with examples to show that prohibition – in its many guises – doesn’t work and often has negative, unintended consequences.

Read more by Professor David Wilson

Lessons from Zimbardo’s “Stanford prison experiment”

How victimhood killed adult values

Chief amongst these is that criminalisation does nothing to tackle why people use drugs and the associated stigmatisation that comes with having a criminal record makes it more difficult for the drug user to find work, support a family or get help to overcome their addiction issues. Even as a prison........

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