At the request of the Ministry of the Interior, the SNCF consented to the provision of land located in the 12th arrondissement of Paris for crack users. The purpose of the maneuver, to keep them away from residential areas.
Even though the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, is opposed to participating in any organized movement of crack users, the prefecture of Paris announces an agreement with the SNCF going in this direction.
“The City of Paris will not participate in any way in any new operation which would only shift the problem without seeking to resolve it in an effective and lasting way” writes the city councilor of Paris in a letter addressed to the prefect Didier Lallement.
At the request of the Minister of the Interior, the SNCF gives its agreement to make land available to #Paris12 capable of welcoming crack users in order to keep them away from residential areas. pic.twitter.com/GW8Au25s68
— Prefecture of Police (@prefpolice) January 25, 2022
For its part, the prefecture of Paris explained, in a press release published on January 25, “that the presence of consumers at Porte de la Villette in the 19th arrondissement is not intended to be permanent because it penalizes” the inhabitants and traders of the piece. The prefecture considers that “nearly five months after this installation, it is necessary to consider moving crack users to another place in Paris which, this time, is not on the public highway or a square”.
The thorny case of crack users
After requesting the Ministry of the Interior from the SNCF, a more permanent solution seems to have been found in the 12th arrondissement. A plot “located at the intersection of two railway lines and Boulevard Poniatowski.”
“Crack users can be directed after the completion of the work and the installation of a secure fence” towards this land loaned by the SNCF. If it is a question of relieving the residents of the 18th and 19th arrondissements, the prefecture recognizes that this is not a way of “definitively solving the problem of crack.”