by Councillor Chris Cunningham

Do Glasgow City Council meetings matter? When your representatives debate issues and pass motions, does it make any difference?

The cynical may well say no, and often they may well be correct, but last week’s full council meeting might just be different.

Councillors unanimously agreed a resolution on the creation of a safer drug consumption facility. Put simply, this would be a place where addicts would be able to inject safely but would also be a vehicle for providing services and a pathway out of drug dependency.

The council meeting heard from individual councillors, from all sides of the chamber, whose lives had been impacted by drugs within their family. Councillor Archie Graham made the point that almost everyone in the chamber would have known someone affected by drug misuse or dependency.

This proposal was agreed some time ago by the health and social care partnership as well as by the council and is based on clinical and public health advice. It is aimed at providing help to the 400-500 addicts across Glasgow whose lives have been destroyed by addiction.

However, and it’s a big however, as currently proposed it would contravene UK drugs legislation, specifically the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act. To provide this facility either the UK government must change that legislation or it would have to devolve the issue to Holyrood to allow the Scottish Parliament to amend the law to allow for clinically supervised, safe consumption facilities.

SNP, Labour, Greens and Conservatives all got behind the proposal and all agreed that the Home Secretary should be asked to come to Glasgow to see and hear about the proposal.

It is rare that the council achieves unanimity on such a contentious issue but it’s a measure of the concern across the chamber at the issues facing the city that the proposal was passed.

We do not know if the Home Secretary will come to Glasgow. We do know that she will be asked and we do know that the invitation has the support of all of Glasgow’s councillors.

If we do manage to get the safer consumption facility and if that does lead to a reduction in harm and fewer addicts we might look back on last week’s council meeting as the point that made the difference.