While there are currently only two, in Paris and Strasbourg, new lower-risk consumption rooms (SCMR) for drug users will be able to open in France. The government has indeed opened the door to the creation of other “shooting rooms“, in a decree of July 18 in the official journal. Access for crack smokers to these establishments has also been authorized.
A modified legal framework
In fact, the text modifies the legal framework of these places. The old specifications only allowed municipalities to open them until next October. In Bordeaux, in Seine-Saint-Denis and in Marseille, faced with the multiplication of reluctance one year before the municipal elections, the projects could not develop. The candidate cities did not jostle each other in the face of time constraints.
But the opening time of these places has now been reduced from three months to one year, allowing municipal teams to consider its launch, even after the 2020 ballot box. The French “shooting rooms” have been tested since the Health Law of 2015, for an end of the experiment in 2022.
5,000 crack smokers in Paris
The device is also now available to consumers taking drugs “by inhalation”. Until now, it was reserved only for “injectors”, often users of heroin. Drug addicts crack smokers, this derivative of cocaine, will thus be able to attend these rooms at lower risk. A significant change: in the north-east of Paris, this drug is wreaking havoc. So that the town hall launched a major action plan last May, rolled out until 2021.
Élisabeth Avril, director of the Gaïa association, manager of the “shoot room” in the Gare du Nord district, was delighted with these advances: “This opens up new perspectives and will make it possible to request the opening of new rooms, whatever the consumption patterns”, she declares to theAFP, taken over by The Parisian.
However, she believes that this will not change anything in the capital for the moment. “There are 5,000 crack smokers in the North East of Paris and we cannot afford to attract them all to the neighborhood”, she explains. His establishment only registers an average of 200 daily visits.
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