GLASGOW MSPs have raised concerns over the plans for safe injecting rooms in Glasgow.

John Mason, Shettleston SNP MSP, has written to the Public Health Minister, Aileen Campbell, outlining the problems he sees in allowing people to take illegal drugs in a supervised facility.

Mr Mason said he is supportive of efforts to reduce drug deaths but fears basing a model on the continued buying and selling of illegal drugs is the wrong approach.

The MSP abstained in a Holyrood vote to back calls for the UK government to change the drug laws to allow the facility to operate.

Mr Mason said: “My Problem is we are expecting them to still have to buy illegally which is controlled by organised crime.”

Instead he would prefer the drug to be supplied at the centre.

He added: “If this is a health issue then we should be providing the heroin and the treatment.”

In his letter to Ms Campbell he said he has discussed his concerns with the police about people travelling to the centre with drugs.

He wrote: “If the intention is that people still buy and sell drugs illegally and then travel to the injecting centre, then I think we have major problems accommodating that. “There is surely a basic contradiction in a model which allows and even encourages the taking of drugs in a supervised location while continuing for it to be illegal to both buy and sell them.”

He added: “I really do not think this is a sustainable model going forward.”

Glasgow’s Conservatives MSPs are also opposed to the opening of a Safe Drugs Consumption Facility.

Their position is at odds with the Conservative group at Glasgow City council who backed plans to urge the Home secretary to grant the necessary law change.

Annie Wells spoke on behalf of her party in a Holyrood debate sating that people need to be encouraged and helped off drugs not given a place to take them freely.

Adam Tomkins. Glasgow Conservative MSP, is also opposed to a SDCF stating it was surrendering in the fight against drugs..

He said: “What the policy spectacularly fails to grasp is that the vast majority of heroin addicts want to stop, and need help to do so.

“By creating this facility, the SNP is waving the white flag in the face of Scotland’s drug crisis.

“Instead of investing in abstinence programmes, or providing a meaningful pathway for users – many of whom are among the most vulnerable in society – to beat the habit, the SNP government is facilitating it.”