VSsome formulas do as much harm as bad policies. The crude name “shooting room” is one of them. Disparaging, stigmatizing, it feeds erroneous representations about the true nature of this type of device and in reality only serves to legitimize a discourse of exclusion. Anything but neutral, designed and overexploited by the detractors of any policy of taking charge of drug users, it has nevertheless imposed itself as the term of reference in almost all the French media.
No, addiction treatment centers (or HSA) are not “shooting rooms”. Firstly because they are not solely dedicated to reducing the risks linked to drug consumption. The Addiction Care Stops are designed as a global vector for getting out of precariousness and returning to care.
Because you have to understand what we are talking about: these structures are aimed at people living for the most part on the street, in extreme precariousness. For a large number of them, they are completely disaffiliated, without any social security coverage, with particularly degraded access to care.
The addiction treatment centers offer these groups, who are excluded among the excluded, support towards comprehensive social and health care: reopening of rights, health check-ups, access to screening for infectious diseases, psychological care, access to substitution treatments. and referral to other addiction treatment systems.
Recognition and dignity
They also offer support in returning to employment and housing. By allowing these men and women in great difficulty to come out of hiding, by refusing to reduce them to their sole status of drug users, the HSAs also offer them a form of recognition and dignity to which every citizen is entitled. .
Secondly, because the “shoot” historically refers to street injection, hidden injection, done in haste and under particularly deleterious safety and hygiene conditions. This is precisely what the addiction treatment centers intend to fight against. Everyone has to win.
Everyone must understand that offering a decent alternative to street consumption actually benefits society as a whole. More than ninety similar structures exist today in Europe, some for more than twenty years. We therefore have enough hindsight to assess its effects and the scientific literature on the subject is abundant.
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