‘Shooting gallery’ agreed for Paris
First drug rooms will open early next year in bid to get drug users off streets and prevent deaths and contamination
TESTS on the first ‘shooting galleries,’ where drug users can inject safely and under supervision, will start early next year in Paris and Strasbourg, with another planned for Bordeaux later in the year.
Aimed at avoiding addicts using drugs in the street, the ‘salles de shoot’ have been agreed in parliament by both MPs and senators as part of the new health law. They will be run as tests for six years.
They are being introduced after a cross-party report in 2014 said the prohibition policy France had used since 1970 had not worked and the number of drug users had soared.
In Paris, the first drug room will open on the site of the Lariboisière hospital in the 10th arrondissement and it will be staffed by health workers.
No drugs will be supplied but the health workers will supply clean syringes to avoid cross-contamination. Users will not face drug possession charges as the amount of drugs will be classed as for ‘personal usage only’.
Residents in the 10th arrondissement had protested about the plans for the drug room in an ordinary street building, fearing an influx of drug users.
Paris mairie later agreed to site the 200m2 shooting gallery on the Lariboisière site, saying this would help reduce the risk of contamination, infection and overdose as well as taking drug users off the streets.
Safe consumption rooms have been proposed in the UK after figures from 2011 showed that 596 people died of illicit heroin and morphine use in England and Wales. However, plans for one in Brighton were rejected by the council which admitted they might be useful for drug users but would not meet community needs.
They are already in use in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Holland, Germany and Switzerland.
