INFO THE POINT. Drugs: record overdoses in Paris in 2021

Lhe “Overdose” group of the narcotics brigade, of the regional direction of the judicial police (DRPJ), has established its “activity” report for the year 2021. Thirty-five people died of an overdose the last year under the jurisdiction of the police headquarters. This is the highest total of the last twenty years. In 2020, there were 11 deaths by overdose of narcotics, in 2019, 29 and in 2017, 19.

First responsible according to the police: methadone, an opioid substitution drug diverted into drugs. “With increasing availability of the product on the illegal market, methadone use involves more uninitiated or occasional users,” they write. For the past ten years, opiate substitution drugs sold…