Drugs: in Lille, Paris and Marseille, projects of “consumer rooms” in stalemate

Despite government arbitration in favor of these devices in these three major cities, the tensions lost around the opening of new structures.

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The last turnaround has come from the north. In Lille, a brutal stop was given to the lower risk consumption room project (SCMR), commonly known as “Shooting Room”. Everything was ready at the end of October to accommodate twelve users and drug injectors (mainly heroin and cocaine, crack …) per hour, 7 days a week in the afternoon, in the district of Faubourg-de-Bethune. But the state changed its shoulder rifle at the last minute: no question of opening this room at the planned location, meant the Prime Minister, Jean Castex, at the town hall by mail, Monday, October 25th.

On the ground, around these devices called “risk reduction” which must, in a public health and public health objective, to the very marginalized drug users to consume in a secure setting, rarely the tensions have see you as strong. A real paradox: the experimentation of “Shoot rooms”, launched in 2016 with a structure in Paris, another in Strasbourg, received the white-sealant of the government this summer. It is therefore an accelerator that was hoped for the actors carrying these structures.

Matignon has made an arbitration in their favor: the measurement is included in the social security financing bill (PLFSS), whose examination in the Senate had to begin on Monday, November 8. On paper, the Ministry of Health, which defends these schemes whose “positive assessment” has been established recently by a report by the Inserm, so carried away against the interior, which has never hidden its opposition to these places where we consume drugs.

In the PLFSS, in addition to the extension of the two existing rooms, is planned the development of new structures, renowned “stops addictions”, with a forecast envelope of 2 million euros per year until 2025. “What blocked so far, it was the framework, says the MP LRM of Charente Thomas Mesnier, general rapporteur of the text. With this measure, we raise the blockages, other rooms will open, it makes sense, the will is there , credits too. “

A Lille,” We are in the absurd “

The state seems far to speak with one voice. In Lille, these are not the local elected officials who have been volute-faced, as has occurred several times in the past on these sensitive projects that provoke fears and opposition among residents. But the Prime Minister: “The establishment of a Room Boulevard de Metz would prejudice the proper deployment of the operation” Town Town “scoped by the Ministry of the Interior since the summer of 2021 to combat drug trafficking particularly Intense in this area, “wrote Jean Castex to the socialist mayor, Martine Aubry.

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/Media reports.