This summer Glasgow will be the first UK city to open a sanctioned safer drug consumption facility. People will bring their own drugs and inject them supervised by staff able to respond immediately if anyone overdoses.

Similar overdose prevention sites and consumption facilities have opened at more than 100 sites in 11 countries over the last 30 years.

Ahead of the Glasgow service opening, The Ferret visited one such project, the Mosspark Treatment and Consumption Service in Toronto, to find out what difference its community-focussed approach can make.

This podcast follows drug users and staff through a day-in-the-life of this service, exploring its roots in civil disobedience and its ongoing fight for recognition.

We heard from those struggling to cope with the realities of addiction to super-strength fentanyl as well as those whose lives had been saved by the Moss Park team.

Texas, MK, Sarah, Erin and others tell stories of love and loss, and of systemic failure in the midst of an ongoing toxic drug death crisis.

But they also highlight the importance of hope, the possibility of healing and the impact that being part of a community can have.

Read the script here.

This podcast is written, recorded and produced by Karin Goodwin for The Ferret. Additional editing and sound design is by Alan Bryden.

Deep thanks go to everyone in the Moss Park community. This podcast is dedicated to the people they’ve lost.

If you need help or support in relation to your drug use you can contact wearewithyou.org.uk, or if you need someone to talk to, you can call thesamaritans.org or call 116 123.

Please support our work by becoming a member, or giving us a donation at theferret.scot and please share this podcast and leave us a review. It really does help.

Health professionals, activists and drug users called for an emergency response to the toxic drug death crisis facing them. And when authorities failed to set up a safer drug consumption facility activists in the Moss Park neighbourhood of the city  took matters into their own hands.

They gathered supplies and nurses and set up an unsanctioned overdose prevention site in the park where they ran it illegally for a year before being granted permission to operate by the health authority and moving inside with funding.

With the UK’s first safer drug consumption facility due to open in Glasgow this summer The Ferret visited the Mosspark Treatment and Consumption Service in Toronto, Canada to find out what difference the community-focussed approach it takes can make.

We heard from those struggling to cope with the realities of super-strength drug fentanyl as well as those whose lives had been saved by the Moss Park team. We heard stories of love and loss, of systemic failure and of the limitations of a service like this.

The toxic drug crisis is ongoing with deaths in the state more than doubling to  2,857 in 2021 and continued alerts about the contaminated drug supply causing multiple deaths.

But we heard stories of hope and healing and the impact that being part of a community that cares can have.

In part three of The Ferret investigates…the health gap – a three-part special podcast from The Ferret media co-op and Greater Govanhill magazine – we turn our attention to the mental wellbeing of young and middle aged men, another issue driving health inequalities in Scotland.

In Scotland, men in the most deprived areas of Scotland have a life expectancy of almost 14 years less than those in the most affluent areas. Of the 753 people that completed suicide in 2021, three quarters were men.

In this episode we hear from James, a joiner from Glasgow, about his struggles with his mental health and Bill Hill of the Lighthouse charity tells us about the way the construction industry, which is currently losing two workers to suicide every day, has been forced to mobilise to save lives.

We also visit San Francisco's Harm Reduction Therapy Center and find out how offering people struggling with substance use therapy on the street is dismantling the myth that some are hard to reach.

In the studio our hosts are joined by Linda Birnie of Mikey’s Line which offers suicide prevention and a helpline across the Highlands and was set-up following the tragic death of two friends, Martin Shaw and Michael Williamson.

Other guests include Graeme Callander of We Are With You, a charity which works with people struggling with their mental health, or alcohol or substance use and psychotherapist Sean McCann, who also works for Strathclyde University

You can find all three episodes of The Ferret investigates...the health gap on The Ferret or wherever you get your podcasts.

Credits:

Hosts: Karin Goodwin, of The Ferret and Samar Jamal, of Greater Govanhill magazine

Interviews: Karin Goodwin

Production: Halina Rifai and Karin Goodwin

Episode editing and sound: Halina Rifai

Music: Loris S. Sarid



Package about the Harm Reduction Therapy Center

Reporting, sound recording and writing: Karin Goodwin

Editing and sound design: Flora Zajicek

Trey Helton, manager of the Overdose Prevention Society in Vancouver

In part two of The Ferret investigates…the health gap – a three-part special podcast from The Ferret media co-op and Greater Govanhill magazine – we look at drug deaths, one of the key factors driving Scottish health inequalities.

In Scotland, men in the most deprived areas of Scotland have a life expectancy of almost 14 years less than those in the most affluent areas. And for women that gap is ten and a half years.

A total of 1,051 people died of drug overdoses across Scotland in 2022 – that’s almost three people a day. And you’re 16 times as likely to die of a drug overdose if you live in a deprived community than if you live in a wealthy one.

In this episode we visit Simon Community Scotland's We See You project and hear from coordinator Jim Thomson and participant Owen Docherty about the power of finding connection.

We also visit Vancouver where Trey Helton tells us how the Overdose Prevention Society is saving lives, and we hear from indigenous women at the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre – a group disproportionately impacted by the opioid crisis there – about how reconnecting with their culture is helping them heal.

In the studio we hear from Simon Community Scotland's Claire Longmuir and Professor Andrew McAuley from Glasgow Caledonian University about what's working in Scotland and what more we need to do.

You can find all three episodes of The Ferret investigates...the health gap on The Ferret or wherever you get your podcasts.

Credits:

Hosts: Karin Goodwin, of The Ferret and Samar Jamal, of Greater Govanhill magazine

Interviews: Karin Goodwin

Production: Halina Rifai and Karin Goodwin

Episode editing and sound: Halina Rifai

Music: Loris S. Sarid

Package about indigenous culture

Reporting, sound recording and writing: Karin Goodwin

Editing and sound design: Flora Zajicek

The Vancouver interviews were recorded on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil Waututh Nations.  

The Ferret investigates…the health gap, is a three-part special podcast from The Ferret media co-op and Greater Govanhill magazine looking at the health gap – that’s the stark difference between the health and wellbeing of people depending on where you live.

In Scotland men in the most deprived areas of Scotland have a life expectancy of almost 14 years less than those in the most affluent areas. And for women that gap is ten and a half years.

This podcast – part of our year-long Mind the health gap solutions journalism project – doesn’t just highlight the problems but looks at the responses, from Scotland and beyond, that might help us fix them.

Part one looks at child and infant health and hears why a good start in life really matters for long term wellbeing. Guests include Linda Bauld, a professor of public health at Edinburgh University who is also a Scottish Government advisor. She claims the Scottish Child Payment is having an impact on reducing child poverty.

We also hear from migrant women accessing English lessons at Milk Cafe in Govanhill,  Glasgow about the challenges of eating well on a restricted budget, and visit the Nurture Early for Optimal Nutrition (NEON) project in the London borough of Tower Hamlets.

You can find all three episodes of The Ferret investigates...the health gap on The Ferret or wherever you get your podcasts.

Credits:

Hosts: Karin Goodwin, of The Ferret and Samar Jamal, of Greater Govanhill magazine

Interviews: Rhiannon Davies and Samar Jamal 

Production: Halina Rifai and Karin Goodwin

Episode editing and sound: Halina Rifai

Music: Loris S. Sarid



Package about Nurture Early for Optimal Nutrition

Reporting, sound recording and writing: Samar Jamal and Rhiannon Davies

Editing and sound: Flora Zajicek

In our latest podcast, Richard Baynes talks to campaigners, landowners and NatureScot about the challenges and benefits of relocating beavers.

The Ferret has reported on the total carbon cost  of the “principle partners” of COP26, which produce a staggering 350m tonnes of carbon a year.

Now, in this exclusive podcast, we look in more depth at the one of the most high-profile of these, the climate talks’ “Principal Supermarket Partner”, Sainsbury’s.

Music thanks to: 

Soma Records, Avoidant Records, Gaming (for Hobbes Music), R.A.F and James Krautabla Ting

https://soma-records.bandcamp.com/

https://hobbesmusicon.bandcamp.com/album/scenes-from-a-deserted-city-lp-digital-download-hm013

https://avoidantrecords.bandcamp.com/

Tracks list: 

Slam: 47.40.991

Gaming: Bruised

Atonomous: Dialeckt

R.A.F: Exit Point

Slam: Strange Dayz

R.A.F and James Krutabla Ting

Gaming: Sodium Orange

Journalist Richard Baynes finds that substantial sums from the fund have helped communities buy assets already in public ownership – using Government cash to buy property the Government or community already owns.

Read more at https://theferret.scot/deer-cull-environmentalists-landowners/

She was interviewed by The Ferret earlier this year when we visited Iraq to report on the impact of Islamic State’s violence in the region.

Dr Hazim runs a specialist centre in Iraqi-Kurdistan that helps Yazidi women who were abducted by IS – and she talked about the unimaginable crimes that women suffered.

She said that most women were raped multiple times. Many were gang raped and some had broken bones when they came to the centre. Scores of women had genital problems.

The Ferret met Dr Hazim in the Kurdish city of Duhok while travelling around the region to document the effect of Islamic State’s rule in some parts, following the terror group’s invasion in 2014.

During that period, Islamic State killed or kidnapped around 9900 Yazidis during wanton "medieval" violence.

Of that figure 3100 people were murdered. Almost half were executed by gunshot or beheading while others were burned alive.

IS also abducted nearly 6800 Yazidis – mostly women – who were forced into sexual slavery.

To find out more go to: https://theferret.scot/podcast-genocide-yazidis-scotlands-call-justice/