Y does he still have drug health policy? Can we succeed in supporting consumers who need it, while emphasizing their responsibility for trafficking and the violence that results from it? In this balancing act between health and safety, as old as the fight against drugs, the government leans to one side. In any case, this is what is displayed in ever more offensive political communication.
Operations “XXL net space”defended by the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, at “Saturday night firecracker [qui] tastes like “dried blood” on the sidewalks »denounced by his counterpart in justice, Eric Dupond-Moretti, the rhetoric around the “war on drugs” declared by Emmanuel Macron in 2021, and the drug addict’s accomplice, has imposed itself. Without it being counterbalanced, at the Ministry of Health, by an audible discourse on prevention, support, care.
There is indeed an “Interministerial Mission to combat drugs and addictive behavior” (Mildeca) integrating the health dimension, a five-year strategy (2023-2027), actions, programs implemented locally, but they are hardly supported politically. Social workers, care providers and addiction professionals report a “erasure”, an “invisibility” of this aspect of public action. Not without consequences.
One subject has become the symbol: the hesitation around the opening of new lower-risk consumption rooms – commonly called “shooting rooms” – intended for people who inject or inhale drugs. This is the last, most visible link in the so-called “risk reduction” policy aimed at crack and heroin users, often the most marginalized. Two of these rooms have been tested since 2016, in Paris and Strasbourg, but the rise of the system, supported during Emmanuel Macron’s first five-year term and recently envisaged again in Marseille, Lille, or Paris, has remained a letter. dead.
A little revolution
The former Minister of Health Olivier Véran had nevertheless included their development – under the name of “addiction treatment centers” – in the 2022 budget law. But each project has since mobilized “residents” against it, and failed, to the great dismay of the actors who denounce the recurring blockage of prefectures. The successors of Mr. Véran Avenue de Ségur have hardly taken an official position.
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