Crack crisis in Paris: a look back at 30 years of wandering and consumption in the open air

It is an “endless problem”. From 2019 the forced displacement consumers of crack multiply to Paris until the evacuation, exactly one year ago, on September 24, 2021, of drug addicts residing in the Jardins d’Éole, in 18^And constituency. The buses are then hired and around a hundred people are taken to the gates of Puppet (Seine-Saint-Denis) a stone’s throw from Place Auguste-Baron in 19^And arrondissement.

A few days after the “anniversary” of the arrival of drug addicts, police operations and arrests are increasing in the camp. It must be said that the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin conferred, in July 2022, one year to the new prefect of Paris, Laurent Nunez, to “fix” this “dramatic” situation.

A two-decade long crisis

Yet the solve the problem”its consumption in the open air and the installation of its utilities in unsanitary fields, dates back almost 25 years to the late 1990s. When how et Why Has the consumption of this inexpensive and devastating drug taken root in the capital? Back to top a television series which has occupied the local political scene for two decades.

These scenes were created through the displacement of populations of crack users, and the dismantling of scenarios implemented by law enforcement and urban renewal strategies that reduce the number of small usable spaces for users and promote the establishment of large open stages.

Heroin, the first drug consumed outdoors

Up until the 1980s, apartment selling between user-dealers was the norm, details Alessandro Marchantcertified professor of history and author of the thesis “The impossible prohibition of drugs in France from the 60s to the 90s”.

heroin he arrived in France in 1983 and left quickly proliferate in the capital in a context of economic crisis and mass unemployment. Users and traffickers of this extremely addicting drug will quickly concentrate in a small, unhealthy neighborhood near the Gare de Lyon: the islet of Chalon. Near 20,000 drug addicts then provide it.

We note the existence of ghettos such as the islet of Chalon or the rue de l’Ouest in Paris where it is possible to easily obtain supplies from traders who act daily with total impunity, worry and exasperate a public opinion so much more anguished that everyone feels worried. and at the same time powerless.

The neighborhood will be entirely destroy in 1985 and his evacuation the drought “will only move the problem”, especially in the Goutte d’Or district in 18^And district of the capital.

The arrival of the crack in the capital

But the “great decade” of heroin and its first phenomena of open scenes, these places of consumption in the open air, will be the ideal breeding ground for proliferation of cracks who entered the capital in 1989. The “pebble”, an inexpensive derivative of cocaine, then comes from the West Indies and finds, according to Alexandre Marchant, “in the stations of the 9 subway its first“ public ”places.

Strasbourg-Saint-Denis, Bonne-Nouvelle … Traffic takes root quickly and consumers will quickly concentrate around Stalingrad square and the roundabout of Leroux. The place, quite spaced and located in a popular neighborhood, will explain, according to the historian, what historical fixation point crack users.

Residents are quickly indignant and frightened by this new open-air consumer space and in 1994 he organized a big one manifestation. As around the islet of Chalon, the strong police presence will not prevent the situation from deteriorating and insecurity in the neighborhood is increasing. Short of solutions and faced with the mobilization of local residents, the Paris city hall decided in 1994 to install fair area.

It is they who will now prevent addicts from parking there to run rides, circuses and shacks, occasionally using strong methods to truly take over the place …

A return to the origins

After a few years of dispersion in the historical places of consumption (the Goutte d’Or, 9^And arrondissement, etc.), where “CRS and baceux roam the streets and force users to move without respite, without solving the problem”, crack users make a massive return to Place Stalingrad in 2001.

A new highly publicized resident mobilization and the creation of the anti-crack collective (CAC) will allow for muscle intervention by the police.

hill crack

The multiple fist actions in Place Stalingrad will allow the creation of a new open stage space a little further north of Paris, on the border with Saint-Denis. The huge redevelopment work in the Plaine Saint-Denis district will encourage the establishment of hundreds of consumers at the level of Door of the Chapelon the land-plains of the large interchange between the A1 motorway and the ring road.

The free lot quickly turns into a field for precarious users and becomes “Hill of the crevasse”. A real place of life, exchange and consumption, the field will take root despite the fifteen evacuations organized by the police between 2005 and 2019.

Users will be moved permanently in 2019 under the reign of the Paris police chief Didier Lallement during the final dismantling of the camp. The latter then moved partly to Porte d’Aubervilliers before being dismantled again in January 2020.

Two years of intense forced displacement

In a final homecoming, Stalingrad becomes, as soon as the hill is evacuated, the nerve center of the deal before the crack users were again moved by the police, this time to the garden of Éole in 18^And common in May 2021.

The strong mobilization of local residents, and in particular the mortar rounds launched at consumers, will lead, on 1 July 2021, to their ban on access to the park. Without solution, the latter then find themselves near the park, more precisely rue Riquet at 19^And arrondissement.

This historic telenovela takes us like this, exactly one year ago, on September 24, 2021, during the evacuation of a hundred people to Place Auguste Baron in 19^And district of the capital.

The erection of a mor between Paris and Pantin, the multiple mobilizations and demonstrations, and finally the announcement, on September 21, 2022, by the mayor of Pantin of the kidnapping of the Defender of Rights: Auguste Baron’s camp, described as “the largest consumer scene of open-air crack to Europe “has become the symbol of failure of a repressive policy.

Police repression called into question?

Already in the early 2000s, the commissioner of the 19^And arrondissement Roger Madec declared to be “aware that the only one police repression cannot solve such a problem in the long run. The constant presence for two decades of police forces around open boxes is proof of this.

The figure of the irrecoverable drug addict could easily pass from heroin addict to “cracker” without the French being informed of the reasons that made heroin disappear from our streets in a decade.

Three years after the adoption of the crack plan, associations and collectives of local residents in collaboration with the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) presented on Thursday 22 September 2022 a report “for the disappearance of open drug scenes”. “The disappearance of open scenes and the improvement of the lives of crack users, local residents and the working conditions of professionals require proactive actions by public authorities “, the report recalls in particular.

Mediation, suitable reception places, socio-professional integration… For these different actors, the crack crisis can be resolved thanks to support. Because, as Alexandre Marchant summarizes, “hunting only displaces the problem”.

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