The assistant to the health of the town hall of Paris announced this Wednesday the opening of a center for drug addicts with 35 beds in the 16th arrondissement of the capital.

A care center for drug addicts, including crack users, with 35 beds, will soon open in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, the health assistant at the Paris town hall said on Wednesday.

While the City, faced with the problem of crack users in the north-eastern boroughs, has been looking for places to welcome them for months, the opening in the coming months of a “stabilization structure” in the former hospital Chardon-Lagache is “very good news”, said Anne Souyris this Wednesday during a press briefing.

“Territorial solidarity”

According to the elected ecologist, the Assistance-Publique Hôpitaux de Paris (APHP) responded to a call for projects from the Regional Health Agency (ARS) for 25 medical reception beds (LAM) and 10 healthcare drop-off beds (LHSS), two types of structures whose establishment in the capital will be a first.

The fact that this structure is located in a district very anchored on the right, far from the districts most affected by drug consumption in the street, contributes to “territorial solidarity”, considers the elected official.

“It will not be a space of consumption”, insisted the deputy mayor PS Anne Hidalgo according to which the consumers taken care of “will have already completed a course of care” and will already be “stabilized”.

“Away from the consumer scene”

Crack consumers “will not come directly from Forceval to Chardon-Lagache”, located “far from the consumption scene”, she indicated in reference to the small square in north-eastern Paris (19th century) that 150 to 200 consumers continue to frequent since September, when they had been moved there by the police headquarters to relieve the neighboring district of the gardens of Eole.

Neither the ARS nor the AP-HP had responded to AFP’s requests on Wednesday evening.

While they worked together on the crack plan, which has mobilized 25 million euros since 2019, and the government has extended the experimentation with lower-risk consumption rooms (SCMR), which have become addiction treatment centers (HSA) , State and City are struggling to find common ground on this sensitive issue.

A waiver last September

At the end of January, in front of the “virulent opposition of the mayor of Paris”, the police headquarters had given up moving the regulars of Forceval in the wasteland of Bercy-Charenton (XII), in the but displayed to relieve the XIXth arrondissement.

In September, it was the town hall that had given up on opening a first reception center for crack users on rue Pelleport (XXth) in the face of immediate opposition from residents and the government’s veto.