SCOTTISH drug charities are calling for urgent action to help those in need after a major legal setback to plans for the UK's first “fix room”.

Last week, Lord Advocate James Wolffe chose to decline to issue guidance on the legality of a drug consumption room.

The Glasgow facility, which would have been the first of its kind in the UK, would allow users a safe space to take drugs, reducing the risks of spreading disease through dirty needles and preventing overdose deaths.

They would also have let high-risk drug users connect with addiction treatment and other health and social services.

Wolffe said it was up to the NHS to decide if it is in the public interest.

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This, in effect, killed the plan stone dead, because users taking their own drugs into the facility would be committing a criminal offence.

Even if police informally agreed to look the other way, if there was a complaint or if a drug user who had been at the consumption room died, then they would have a responsibility to investigate.

David Liddell, CEO of the Scottish Drugs Forum, said the news was “hugely depressing”.

He said: “It means that a drug consumption room cannot be delivered in a timescale that will respond to the pressing needs of a group who are among the most vulnerable in our society.”

“One of the benefits of this service would have been to help contain Glasgow’s HIV outbreak. We have spent a year awaiting this decision. We should redouble our efforts and deliver heroin-assisted treatment now to this population. There are no legal barriers to this provision.

Scotland faces significant problems: 61,500 people with drug problems, the highest in Europe per head of population; 867 fatal overdose deaths in 2016, again the highest in Europe per head of population.

“There are continuing outbreaks of infection among drug injectors – the most recent being 105 cases of HIV in an ongoing outbreak in Glasgow.

“We also need a wider vision of how we reach out to Scotland’s most vulnerable people and help them address the significant health and social challenges they face.”