‘We must face up to Bristol’s drug problem with bold solutions’

This article by Green Councillor Cara Lavan was originally published on Bristol 24/7 on September 3rd 2024. 

Ten years ago, my partner died of an overdose of heroin and crack. It was a day I never thought I’d see, even though we’d been through a year of hell as he tried again and again to stop using.

We had a young baby and we were both working. We desperately needed support but because the drugs he used were illegal, many avenues of support were closed to us. There was so much shame and stigma that we could barely tell anyone about what we were going through.

Jake Coe (Cara’s former partner) who died of a drug overdose aged 37 in 2014 – photo: Cara Lavan

This year, on overdose awareness day, I remembered him – and the many others whose families I have since met, also bereaved through drug overdoses.

I’m now a City Councillor in Bristol and I am determined that we see changes in the way the city deals with drugs and the people who use them.

Bristol has a hard drug problem.

We have the fourth highest proportion of problematic substance users in the country. In just one week in 2023, six people died from heroin overdoses in Bristol.

Residents are fed up with seeing open dealing on street corners and finding needles in parks. However, what we all know by now is that every time there’s a crackdown, the problem just moves to a different area.

There’s no measure by which the UK’s drug policy is a success. Drug overdose deaths go up year after year. Drug use is increasing. And no matter how many dealers the police catch, the drug supply never gets meaningfully interrupted.

So how do we change the story?

It’s well known that there’s a link between problematic drug use and homelessness. Less well known is that over 80% of injecting drug users have experienced one or more types of childhood trauma.

At what point do the vulnerable children that we would seek to protect, become adults who many would write off as ‘junkie scum’ ?

Many injecting drug users will tell you that drug use starts as a route to killing emotional pain. What starts off as relief or sometimes ‘fun’, becomes necessity as addiction takes hold.

In a criminal market, this brings a host of other problems – such as where to get the money to fund your growing habit and how to deal with the health conditions that inevitably come with consuming items from an illicit drug market.

As a city, Bristol is one of the most forward thinking in terms of how it deals with drugs. After years of negotiation, the Loop have finally been able to set up a drug checking service.

With the arrival of super-strength synthetic opioids such as fentanyl and nitazenes, the checks this service provides are saving many lives.

What many Bristol city councillors would like to see next, is an overdose prevention facility. This is a place where people who have bought and plan to inject drugs into themselves, can do it safely.

Medical professionals in the centre supervise the person injecting and make sure that they don’t overdose – or if they do go into overdose, they can intervene to stop the person from dying.

Nobody has ever died from an overdose in one of these centres.

These medical professionals can also give advice, exchange used needles for new ones and make referrals to other services.

Many countries in the world already have these spaces and there is evidence they reduce overdose risk, needle-sharing and negative neighbourhood impacts such as street injecting, drug related litter and so on.

In 2022, Bristol had an estimated 4,940 opiate and/or crack users. This is the second largest estimated rate of opiate and/or crack users (per 1,000 population) of the English core cities and the largest proportion of very high complexity clients.

This means they are more likely to be in treatment for longer and need support which weighs heavily across public services including, but not limited, to the NHS and the police.

The arrival of super strong synthetic opioids into the drug supply means that unless we take serious action, we are likely to see drug death figures continue to rise.

Each of these deaths is someone’s daughter, someone’s son, someone’s partner, sibling or parent – and I wouldn’t wish that pain of loss on anyone, especially when we could be setting them on the road to recovery instead.

People increasingly agree that we need to treat drugs as a medical problem and not a criminal one. We need a compassionate approach.

One that stops the dehumanisation of drug users and looks at the root causes of how they’ve got to where they are. One that reminds them they have value in society and given the right support, they can find their place again.

Overdose prevention centres are just the start of the changes we need to see in drug policy, but in the face of a Westminster government refusing to look with fresh eyes at our drug problem, they are a good start.

Joined-up public health approaches like this can help reduce drug-related deaths, reduce the spread of diseases like HIV and Hepatitis C, reduce ambulance call outs, drug-related crime and litter and to support communities in building a better future.

To do this, we as a city, need to come together to say we want to do things differently. We need to say that trying to police our way out of the drug death crisis hasn’t worked and that we are ready to look for new solutions – solutions that have been tried and tested elsewhere.

It’s time we had them here in Bristol too.

If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this story, please contact the Bristol Drugs Project for support and advice.