'Girls Night In' Why are people boycotting nightclubs tonight?

Nightclubs are set to be boycotted across Scotland to make a stand against spiking.

The initiative known as 'Girls Night In' is being held over different nights across the country, but the majority of Scottish groups will abandon their night out tonight (October 28th).

It follows various reports of people being 'spiked' in night time venues over the past few weeks. Many of these claims are of the more common method of drink spiking, where people - most often women - have either drugs or excess alcohol put into their drinks without their consent.

But recently Police Scotland have begun investigating "a small number" of allegations of spiking via injection.

READ MORE: Exclusive, student fears for long term health after being spiked by injection

Aberdeen, Dundee, Glasgow and Edinburgh have all had instances of these reports, with victims posting their stories and pictures of what they believe are puncture marks on social media.

The campaign 'Girls Night In' was started by an Edinburgh based group but soon expanded to other locations.

In posts the page said:

"We deserve to have fun on our nights out.

"It's not fair that our club experiences are being tainted by the fear, worry and anxiety that we're going to be drugged."

The idea is to encourage venues, but also the Police and the Government, to do more to prevent and punish instances of spiking.

But there are varying opinions on how, specifically the businesses, can go about doing that.

Glasgow Woman Hannah Thomson started a petition - 'Make it a legal requirement for nightclubs to thoroughly search guests on entry' - which has garnered almost 170,000 signatures online.

She told us:

"An obvious answer to this is that there's not the proper checks being done at the door.

"This starts and ends at the door of the night clubs.

"Right now clubs are doing random searches on people, I don't think that's right, I don't think that's correct that they use their own judgement on who they think they should be searching.

"By it being mandatory that means everyone's being searched."

Some groups disagree with this call though, saying more searches could end up being discriminatory against already marginalised people.

Anna Cowan is Co-Founder of 'Girls Against', she told our news team:

"I think it doesn't challenge the route of the problem which is this kind of culture of sexual violence that is prevalent in night life.

"Just having more searches, obviously on the surface it looks great

"But it's only a surface level approach, I think it needs to be a real restructuring of the nightlife scene."

Anna told us she believes more training for staff on spotting those who have been spiked and helping that person is required.

She also encourages others going to events to challenge behavior they think is wrong.

Some venues have introduced welfare officers, or similar, who take on the role of making sure customers are safe and are cared for if unwell.

"There just needs to be a much more compassionate approach to this issue." She continued.

"Sometimes when people are spiked the venue staff or bouncers think they are just too drunk and they are thrown out onto the street and then they are vulnerable and have no way of getting home.

"So I think welfare staff is a really great solution for that."

Some venues have decided to close their doors during the boycott, and instead treat it as a training night for staff courses on spiking.

Tony Cochrane operates a number of venues in Aberdeen and Dundee.

He said:

"We have a number of stringent measures, policies and initiatives that make our customers feel safe and supported within our venues.

"We run both the 'Ask Angela' and 'Angel shot' initiatives.

"Our staff are fully trained look after any issues you may have and CCTV is deployed and monitored throughout the venue.

"We have spike testing kits and a drink replacement service for customers full piece of mind, we have an online reporting service.

"We also have a paid taxi for anyone in need of help."

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