THE UK Government has a decision to make.

Is dealing with shockingly high drug deaths and HIV among drug injecting addicts a health issue or is it criminal justice?

Do we use a health based approach to try and treat and prevent deaths or do we use the law to prosecute for possession of drugs?

That is the question facing the Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, as pressure mounts in Glasgow, and now with the support of the Scottish Parliament, for a safe drug consumption facility.

On the one hand international evidence shows that deaths from overdose and infections can be reduced.

On the other drugs are illegal and it is unpalatable for many to not only allow addicts to be in possession of heroin but provide them with a safe place where they can inject it.

The supporters and the arguments for a facility are piling up.

Infection rates of HIV and Hepatitis among drug users are rising. The number of discarded needles and drug taking equipment in city centre streets, back courts and closes in also increasing.

So the current situation poses a risk to the drug addicts themselves and to the wider public. The council wants it, the health board want it. Politicians across parties are in agreement it will help reduce what is a dire situation in Glasgow.

While Tory MSPs at Holyrood are opposed to the centre the Glasgow Conservative Councillors backed calls for the Home secretary to come and see the need stating it was a “public health emergency”.

There were 170 drug related deaths in Glasgow in 2016. The HIV rate reportedly trebled in the last two years and more than 500 needles and sharps were cleaned up in the city last year.

But there are opponents as well who do not want this facility to be opened.

Providing a safe place to take drugs is not the answer to getting people off drugs say some like Glasgow Conservative MSP Annie Wells.

John Mason SNP MSP for Shettleston covering an area blighted by heroin for decades is not happy that it depends on the buying and selling of illegal drugs.

Instead abstinence programmes are promoted.

This doesn’t make sense. People are not abstaining they are shooting poison directly into their veins in closes and on wasteground.

The current justice approach has not tackled the drug problem and hundreds have died while we persist in a zero tolerance approach.

The current situation means they are more likely to share equipment and contract a potentially deadly infection or be found dead in a back close from an overdose.

Yes, the change in the law that is required will mean that it is no longer illegal to be in possession of some specified Class A drugs in certain circumstances.

The alternative is to persist with the current situation which has not worked and continues to see annual death totals that had they arisen from other causes would be a cause for national alarm and calls for urgent action.

So the choice is this.

Allow people to die, sacrificed on the altar of “Law and Order” or try something radical, proven to make a difference in cities where it has been tried.

It is life or death. There is only one answer: “Choose life”.