One year from the Girls Night In nightclub boycotts, where do we stand with drink spiking?

One year ago, I created the Girls Night In campaign with the help and support of my friends in an attempt to call widespread attention to the local, national, and global issue of drink spiking. The Girls Night In movement was started through Instagram on the 17th of October, 2021 amidst a whirlwind of spiking incidents occurring in Edinburgh.

The movement proposed a boycott of nightclubs in Edinburgh as a means of demanding action from those establishments to demonstrate that they are prioritising the safety of their patrons, given the fact that these incidents were primarily occurring under their roofs.

What started as a small social media movement quickly turned into a national campaign which spread throughout the UK within hours and throughout the world within a matter of days. The momentum of Girls Night In reflected the imminent and widespread fear surrounding the issue of spiking which was evidently escalating and clearly affecting the lives of many. 

During the month of October, the Girls Night In Instagram accumulated over 6,300 followers, reached and engaged with over 26,000 social media accounts, and had over 2,000 people confirm that they were taking part in the nightclub boycotts on the 28th of October. Over 40 other cities took part in the Girls Night in Campaign. 

At the beginning of this endeavour, I asked the followers and supporters of Girls Night In what would make them feel safer in nightclubs. I outlined the most frequent and important concerns of the followers in an open letter to nightclubs to detail specific improvements they can make in their businesses.

Subjects of discussion ranged from increased security to staff re-training and focused on not only preventing these heinous attacks but also handling them in the correct manner. The primary recurring theme was diligence; these establishments and their staff must be diligently looking out for the safety of their patrons from start to finish, and laws and regulations should reflect this diligence. 

So, a whole year later, let’s look at where we’re at with drink spiking.

In the aftermath of the campaign, different clubs had different approaches and solutions to prioritising, or not prioritising, safety in their venues. A series of polls and question boxes were posted on the Girls Night In Instagram in recent days to reflect on progress over the last year.

“Have you experienced increased security at nightclubs since the boycotts (last October)”?

268 (43 per cent) followers voted yes and 360 voted no (57 per cent).

The kinds of security measures that had been implemented in the experience of the followers that voted yes are:

Increased security

“Searches but they aren’t thorough at all and they target specific people not everyone.”

“Bag checks.”

“Body searches, going through wallets.”

“Patting down and checking bags.”

Drink lids

“A lot more lids with drinks.”

“Cup covers are the only thing that I’ve seen that has lasted.”

However, some suggested implementations that were put in place at the time have since disappeared:

“They were implemented for about a week then forgotten about.”

“Lids on drinks but only continued in one club.”

“They were in place for a while, but now they’ve all stopped.”

In general, do you feel safer in nightclubs/on nights out in Edinburgh?

154 people (26 per cent) voted yes.

136 (23 per cent) voted no.

303 people (51 per cent) voted that they hadn’t noticed a difference.

In your experience, have spiking cases increased, decreased, or remained the same since the boycotts last October?

Only 32 people (six per cent) voted that they believed cases had increased, while 281 people (50 per cent) voted that cases had decreased.

249 people (44 per cent) voted saying they believe the numbers had stayed the same.

In November, one month after the boycott took place, a report found that one in nine women say they have had their drink spiked, while one-third of people say they know somebody who has had their drink spiked.

Spiking does not discriminate by gender, in fact, six per cent of men have stated they have had their drink spiked, and one in five men say they know somebody who has been a victim of spiking. 

The same report asked the public to assess how seriously different groups of people would take their spiking and found that women were split over whether or not they thought the police would take their claim seriously: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was honoured to sit in an Education, Children and Young People Committee meeting on ‘drink and needle spiking’ on Wednesday the 26th of January. Over the course of two hours, a panel of many different representatives discussed progress towards combating spiking. Participants included Andrew Green (Scottish Beer & Pub Association), Kate Wallace (Victim Support Scotland), Superintendent Hilary Sloan (Police Scotland), Professor Sally Maptone (Universities Scotland) and Edinburgh University’s very own EUSA President Ellen MacRae.

The official report from the committee meeting highlights one of the points that I made during the meeting: “One of the key issues in the conversation is the fact that there is such a lack of clarity on the procedure for reporting spikings. That goes back to education and to the culture behind the incidents. As a student, I am someone to whom it could very well happen, and I know a lot of people to whom it has happened. Nobody really knows the exact procedure—that is, there is no clear-cut procedure.

“That is a fundamental issue because, if that is not being widely publicised as something that should be followed afterwards, people will not do that. They will have already experienced trauma, so they may not be completely motivated to do all the research to find the specific thing that they have to do afterwards. From here on out, there should be a focus on establishing a clear procedure on who and where to go to. I am sure that there is such a procedure, but it needs to be more integrated into the education on the topic”.

On the 26th of April 2022, the UK parliament released a report that revealed that the government is considering the case for a separate criminal offence for spiking in the wake of the dramatic increase in spiking cases seen at the end of 2021. The same report also suggested that the most pressing need is for police to collect more data on perpetrators and their motives for spiking innocent victims, saying: “The Home Office should commission research to feed into a national strategy for prevention, detection, and prosecution of spiking”.

Overall, although drink spiking remains an issue, as it has been for decades, one positive thing that has come from the Girls Night In movement is awareness of the dangers of drink spiking. Along with this awareness comes education and advice for prevention and support for victims.

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