It’s necessary “a course of care, risk reduction, social accommodation“, pleaded Saturday September 24 on franceinfo William Lowenstein, addictologist doctor and President of SOS Addictions, while a demonstration took place this Saturday at the town hall of Pantin to denounce the camp located north-east of Paris towards the Porte de la Villette where crack users are gathered. William Lowenstein also underlines “repression was never enough“. According to him, “she complicates things“.
franceinfo: Who are these crack users who gravitate around the Porte de la Villette and how many are there?
William Lowenstein: They are between 300 and 500 people in most estimates. Most accumulate precariousness. A certain number are without papers, without resources. In most large cities, we are well aware of the complexity of homeless people who become alcohol-dependent. Imagine open scenes with 300 or 500 alcoholic homeless people. The objective is to put health and safety and to put an end to these open scenes. But getting rid of these open scenes is horribly complex, as with alcoholics. And if we don’t give ourselves the means for a course, with high means, we will only have these illusions or these noises of little political communication boots which, alas, leave the local residents in insecurity, in hell, and precarious people, with these multiple precariousness, at risk of both psychiatric and physical deterioration.
Can you remember what crack is?
It’s the poor man’s cocaine. And unlike heroin, we don’t yet have a substitution treatment. So that further complicates what we can call care. Even if you can take breaks, you don’t have the effectiveness of the substitution treatments that settled down to the open heroin scenes long ago now. From a more sociological and experimental point of view, all the open scenes that have taken place for 40 years have ended in disaster. It’s just unbearable. This presupposes the establishment of care pathways, risk reduction and social accommodation. Imagine the consequences of a gathering of 300 or 500 people in great difficulty with this cocaine of the poor.
What do you think of the strong way, by incarcerating in a closed place these people who could be better taken care of?
I am not saying that one should not repress, like drunkenness in the public square. But provided that behind, there are care circuits. Our prisons have about a third of people with major addiction problems or major psychiatric problems. So, for the moment, faced with complexity, we are trying to put forward the idea that repression could be enough. And historically, since the prohibition of alcohol, it has never been enough. Worse, it complicated things.