In several large metropolises, in Marseille, Bordeaux, Lille, etc. projects for lower-risk consumption rooms – known as “shooting rooms”, allowing injecting drug users (opiates, heroin, etc.) to consume in safer conditions and framed – have become a sea serpent. Always on the verge of success, always finally repelled. The experiment opened in France in 2016 resulted in the opening of only two structures; one in Paris, the other in Strasbourg.
To hear the actors of risk reduction carrying these structures, among the main obstacles are the municipalities, often reluctant to take the step of measures arousing the fear of the inhabitants. “Today, local elected officials are on the front line in the validation process, it is too much pressure and there is no reason to exist when we are talking about public health systems”, believes Nathalie Latour, of the Addiction Federation, which defends a change in the rules for creating lower-risk consumption rooms.
At the Ministry of Health, where it is announced that the system will continue, questioning the process of creating these structures is not on the agenda. “The Minister is convinced of the usefulness of the device and considers that two rooms since 2016, that is not the mesh of needs, says one in the entourage of Olivier Véran. But the ball is above all in the mayors’ court, and for this to work, these are projects that must reach a consensus between all the players. [maires, agences régionales de santé, justice et intérieur]. ” Two or three projects would be “Ripe” to hatch in the short term, according to the Ministry of Health, especially in Bordeaux and Marseille.
“The problem remains the location”
In the ranks of municipal teams, if the lights appear green, however, we are still moving quietly on this sensitive subject. In Marseille, the creation of a “shooting room” was part of the program of the Marseille Spring, the union on the left elected in June 2020. A year after taking office, Michèle Rubirola, ephemeral EELV mayor became first deputy in charge of health, today evokes a “Project that will be put in place”.
The new municipality found in the cupboards of the old governance an almost complete file which should have been completed before 2020. “The room was to be installed in the former morgue of the Hospital de la Conception, but the outcry from the neighbors and the opposition of the mayor of the sector at the time made Jean-Claude Gaudin retreat”, summarizes Béatrice Stambul, psychiatrist and president of Asud Mars Say Yeah, one of the oldest self-support associations for drug users in France, which carries the project and is called upon to manage the room.
You have 50.23% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.