With its coarse leaves, jaggy spikes and purple blooms - the thistle is known as Scotland's national flower. Now it is also the name of the UK's first safer drug consumption facility, opening in Glasgow's east-end on Monday, 13 January.

Like its jaggy botanical namesake this drug injection centre - almost a decade in the planning - has been a thorny issue. It's considered bold and beautiful by many though met with more ambivalence by others.

But now, managers claim, it's time to prove that this approach can work and save lives. They reject criticisms of £2.3m costs, pointing out that specialist services for other health conditions - from cancer to kidney failure - would not be held up to the same level of scrutiny. And they claim that its trauma informed approach will help marginalised people traditionally excluded from services access the support they need.

The service, which will open daily from 9am to 9pm, is designed to reduce overdoses by providing a safe and clean place for an estimated 400 people who inject drugs such as heroin and cocaine in Glasgow's city centre. It will not provide facilities for people to smoke drugs at this stage, although work is ongoing to develop this service.

Neither will drug testing be available when it opens on Monday, though this is also due to be made available at Glasgow's Hunter Street complex, where both the Thistle and the assisted heroin treatment service are also based.

While on the premises drug users will not be prosecuted for possession. Those attending can also ask for help to reduce their drug use or access treatment services including drug rehab as well as being able to access support with housing or health services.

Promoting safer drug use

Early this week The Ferret was given a pre-opening tour of the Thistle, with its muted colour palette, sleek reception area and "chat rooms" - a more informal name for consultation rooms suggested by an advisory panel with experience of drug use.

The same panel gave the Thistle its name, advised on its layout and helped recruit staff.

Inside the injecting space, eight brightly lit mirrored booths dominate behind a nursing station where injecting equipment will be provided to drug users, who bring their own drugs with them.

Initially they might pass for vanity tables. But the large floor space behind them - where staff can give revive someone if they collapse due to overdose, along with oxygen tanks and access to an ambulance bay, are a reminder of the serious purpose of this facility.

Through the doors from the recovery area is a lounge with comfy chairs, a bookcase and kitchenette where people can make tea and coffee. The aim is to offer some respite from complicated and often harrowing lives after using the injection space and support from harm reduction workers, some of whom have experience of drug addiction.

In this still empty room there is a feeling of calm that belies the political battle it took to get to this stage. First proposed officially in 2016, in response to Glasgow's HIV epidemic affecting injecting drug users, permission was initially blocked by the Home Office under the then Conservative government.

In August 2023 Westminster's Home Affairs Committee recommended pilots of safe consumption facilities in areas across the UK where local government and others deem there is a need. A month later Scotland's Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain confirmed that it would not be in the public interest to prosecute and the safe consumption room was given the green light by Glasgow City Council with the backing of the Scottish government.

'A foundation to build on': Can Scotland's first safer injection site tackle the drugs crisis?

"Politically, all eyes are now on Glasgow," explains councillor Allan Casey, city convenor for workforce, homelessness and addiction services. "Some people are watching with skepticism. Some people are watching with interest because they want to do the same thing as we're doing.

"So there will be a huge amount of ...