“Crack won’t disappear from our world, but the social insecurity, violence and distress that comes with it may”

Dor more than thirty years, open drug scenes, ranging from heroin to crack, have settled in the Paris region. From Place Stalingrad to Square Forceval, via the “hill of crack”, the social contract of these neighborhoods as well as access to fundamental rights and health for drug users have been constantly flouted.

Faced with the distress and misery of open scenes of drug use, faced with the ineffectiveness of repression alone as a response for decades, we, elected officials, residents of Greater Paris and all the territories concerned, propose with realism to put an end to the open scenes of drugs and the human misery which results from it.

French history is long but repeats itself, without the only decision having demonstrated its effectiveness being taken. After the long litany of evacuations/dispersals of drug users from the 1990s-2020s, after the dismantling of the “crack hill” in 2019 which resulted in the umpteenth displacement of drug users to Place Stalingrad, Didier Lallement , former prefect of police, organized a new trip to the Eole public garden in May 2021.

Without rights and with almost no care

Of course, each time there was violence, first between users, women being the first victims, but also outside, with exponential access to drugs and the complete absence of prospects. social. Another move followed in September 2021 to the Square de la Porte-de-la Villette, chosen by Gérald Darmanin.

Out of sight, supposedly far from the houses, surrounded by the ring road, the dangerous surrounding roads and a concrete wall, a few hundred drug users survived in this camp for a little over a year. , most without rights and with almost no care.

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This week, again, Sisyphus has taken up his stone again to climb where we fall back without surprise. Too bad, Mr. Darmanin, it seemed, however, that having associated crack with the term ” health “ in July when your new prefect was made official, you understood how it was possible to really act for the good of all now. And, as you say – unfortunately for now inappropriately -, ” definitively “.

Driving away hundreds of users cannot be a solution. Once again, the inhabitants of North-East Paris, including many of us, will find one collapsed in front of their door, the other in a building hall, the third on a staircase on the metro way.

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