“There is no miracle solution” to fight against the trafficking and consumption of crack in Paris, explained Thursday, September 15 on franceinfo Professor Amine Benyamina, head of the psychiatry and addictology department at the Paul-Brousse hospital in Villejuif (Val-de-Marne). The Minister of the Interior has given the prefect of police of Paris, Laurent Nuñez, one year to eradicate this scourge in the North-East of Paris.
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“We are in a complex situation, in which all the actors from near and far must intervene”, explains the addictologist. He says he had “a little scared” of Gérald Darmanin’s security discourse, but says “breathe a little more” since the announcement of a medical care plan by the prefect of police. Crack users are “sick people” above all, he recalls. “It may be in Paris, it is the whole nation that must be concerned by these issues”he says.
franceinfo: How do you judge the ambition of the government?
Amine Benyamina: When I heard about this eradication from the mouth of the Minister of the Interior, I was a little scared. But when I hear Laurent Nuñez, the Paris police chief, say that this is a problem in which they must be taken care of, I breathe a little more. We are in a complex situation, in which all the actors from near and far must intervene. We are dealing with people who, for years, have had a complex pathology, that is to say, they are consumers of a product that makes them extremely dependent and socially disaffiliating and which, in the end, destroys the person. We end up with people who have physical problems and psychiatric problems. We are dealing with people who have no roof, who no longer have social ties. They are the object of a dredge and a regular visit of the traffickers. All the bodies that are affected by this complexity must intervene in a concomitant and organized manner.
Is this the case today?
Obviously, this is not the case. We are dealing with local residents who, rightly, can’t take it anymore because we see an open scene with people taking drugs in the middle of an urban area. We see for reasons linked to electoral calendars and linked to a protest, the raids of the police who evacuate people who are sick. They are moved to Paris or to the outskirts of Paris. We also see little coordination and little real help for services located in the North-East of Paris and which have shown their ability to be able, in a minor but effective way, to work in a concerted manner. This is all that needs to be asked and that needs to be put in place in the North-East of Paris.
Do you think the Paris police chief can get results?
I am not impugning the prefect’s intentions. He spoke of psychiatric, psychological, addictive treatment. It’s the first time I’ve heard that from a security man. I want to say chick. Then there is the need to diagnose. Know that behind these drug addicts, the vast majority have psychiatric illnesses or mood disorders, bipolar disorders, extremely serious psychotic disorders. And so, we have a kind of feeding from psychiatric illness to drug use and vice versa. And then there is the whole medico-social network that is put in place, what is called orientation and then long-term follow-up. There is no one-size-fits-all miracle solution. It does not exist. There is a consultation. There are means to allocate to the structures which are confronted with this type of population which is not very numerous, roughly speaking between 300 and 1,000 people. It may be in Paris, it is the whole nation that must be concerned by these issues, even if it means breaking down into small groups in appropriate structures in the rest of France.