“We need dedicated places to welcome crack users if we want to get out of this inhuman situation”, estimated Saturday, October 2 on franceinfo William Lowenstein, addictologist and president of the association SOS Addictions, while a new demonstration of residents is planned in the afternoon against the presence of crack users in the streets of Pantin and Aubervilliers from the 19th arrondissement of Paris.
franceinfo: Do we need dedicated places to welcome crack users?
William Lowenstein : Yes, we need dedicated places to welcome crack users if we want to get out of this situation that is inhuman for them and unbearable for residents. But consumption rooms are effective on two conditions: first if they form part of a much more comprehensive medico-social care with links to addictology and psychiatric care services, but also if a consultation is undertaken with residents, law enforcement, the prefect and the Regional Health Agency.
Are there any known medical treatments?
You should know that crack is a violent form of cocaine, quick since it is smoked. However, for the treatment of cocaine, we are not very good. There are no substitute drugs as for heroin even when it is injected and this therapeutic and medicinal weakness presupposes an increase in the means of psychological and social support. This is the reason why these consumption rooms must be entrances to a treatment path and the word that is seldom heard is that of bridge. If the consumption room turns into an unbearable ghetto for patients and residents alike, we are in failure. If, on the other hand, we manage to achieve real bridges in a care pathway, that changes everything.
The problem is once again the lack of resources?
Yes, we need significant resources. There are more than 300 passages per day in the consumption room in Paris, a little less in the other room in Strasbourg. It is not just one overwhelmed room that can solve the problem. But, given what we are doing there, shifting the problem with the cost of the repression that this implies, I think that we are in equivalent budgets.
How do you explain that these consumers meet in the open in the same place?
Crackers tend to congregate in a place where the deal can be handy, because the action of crack is very short. They don’t buy food for hours. They buy something to consume a little, and then a little more, and again, because the need to consume is terribly strong.
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