THE plan to open the UK’s first injecting room for heroin addicts in Glasgow is an “important step” in recognising that prohibition of drugs has been a failure, a former senior police officer has argued.

A controversial proposal to set up a facility to allow medically-supervised taking of drugs and provision of heroin was last week approved in principle by authorities, with some critics claiming the move was “promoting” drug use.

But former Strathclyde Police inspector Jim Duffy, of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), which campaigns for the decriminalisation of drugs, said it was recognition of the failure of current “war on drugs” policy.

He said: “We have had 45 years of the Misuse of Drugs Act in this country and it has been a complete and utter failure – there is not a drug free town, street or village anywhere in the country.

“This is a recognition that what we have been doing hasn’t worked and it is a very, very small, but very important, first step.

“If it is successful it allows you to plant in people’s minds there is a different way to tackle the drug problem.”

Officials from the Glasgow City Alcohol and Drug Partnership hope the drug injecting room will reduce drug-related deaths and cases of HIV, with concern over an ongoing outbreak of the virus among addicts in Glasgow.

Jolene Crawford of Anyone’s Child, a group of families bereaved by drugs which campaigns for reform of drug laws, said addicts were too often dismissed as “stereotypical junkies”. Her cousin was a heroin user who was murdered.

She said: “What my family shows is that it really can happen to anyone – we are just a normal family.

“My cousin wasn’t killed by the drugs themselves, he was killed because he was forced to live in this shady underworld.

“The injection room is absolutely common sense, I don’t understand why anyone would object to it – it is safer for the user and it is safer for communities.”