In Paris, the drug problem is worsening – and President Macron argues with Mayor Hidalgo whether stronger repression or better aid projects are needed.
Paris – For months, the residents of the Stalingrad district in the northeast of Paris struggled with open letters, appeals and petitions. In vain: Neither the city government nor the prefect of police did anything against the notorious drug trade on the “Place of the Battle of Stalingrad” in the 19th arrondissement. Then the people in the quarter took action themselves. With pot lids, they made as much noise as possible on their windows at 8 p.m. to drive the dealers away inside. They then demonstrated on the street to request that drug addicts be removed from doorways. “It’s dramatic, today these poor guys even shoot themselves in front of children,” a mother named Anna told the press. One evening in May, gunfire suddenly went off at the drug handling point. Unknown people – presumably local residents – shot fireworks in the direction of the dealers. Thereupon calm finally returned.
Drug problem in Paris: Crack is sold and smoked in front of children
A precarious calm. The city of lights drug problem has by no means been solved. “Stalincrack”, as the transhipment point is popularly known, is only one of 66 drug sales outlets in Paris. In the entire metropolitan area of the French capital, more than 900 were counted, a third of them in the banlieue department of Seine-Saint-Denis. There the drug gangs use the winding entrances to the housing estates for their business. They paint the prices on the walls of the ten- to fifteen-story stairwells: Moroccan shit for 10 euros per 1.8 grams, cocaine from Bolivia for 30 euros a half gram, crack for 60 euros a gram.
The residents are powerless. In the municipality of Saint-Ouen, also located in the north-east of Paris and known for its flea market, an unusual pact was concluded: if you deal, you leave at 10 p.m., residents do not call the police.
The police in Paris? Totally overloaded with the drug hotspots
The police hardly ever come anyway. With 1000 hotspots, it can’t intervene everywhere – and when it does, it shifts the problem. In the summer of 2018, Police Prefect Didier Lallemand, a confidante of President Emmanuel Macron, closed the so-called Crack Hill north of Stalingrad Square. When the police cleared the dangerous and neglected place, no one thought of supporting social projects. In Macron’s eyes, the red-green city government is responsible for this.
To get the drug addicts off the streets, Mayor Anne Hidalgo opened a nearby park, Les Jardins d’Eole. As expected, it attracted the crack trade like a magnet. At the end of June, Prefect Lallemand also had this park along the train tracks cleared.
Drug problem in the north of Paris: the city only has one fixer room for crack addicts
He doesn’t have a solution for crack smokers. The government still leaves that to the municipal welfare. The head of the only fixer room in Paris so far, Elisabeth Avril, has long been committed to the Swiss four-pillar model (prevention, therapy, damage limitation and repression). The city of Zurich offers four “Salles de shoot” (fixed room), the ten times more populous metropolitan area of Paris only one. And the Covid crisis has exacerbated the drug problem in Paris. The number of crack users: in the greater Paris area, the drug center Csapa estimated 13,000 in 2019; According to the social workers, the numbers have risen sharply since then.
Mayor Hidalgo has now announced that she wants to open the first catchment room “this summer” solely for crack consumers. She doesn’t dare to say where in advance for fear of resident protests. Resistance is great: the residents of wealthy neighborhoods do not want their homes to lose value due to a drug room nearby. In the poorer districts around Stalingrad, too, parents are resisting the idea that, after the migrant camps of recent years, they should also take in drug users.
Drug problem in Paris: residents defend themselves against pressure rooms in their neighborhood
A solution does not only fail because of the resistance of the local residents and a lack of budget: The political dispute makes any consensual approach impossible. Macron’s Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin is categorically against fixed rooms or similar contact points. Hidalgo accuses the Macron government that the police operations do not provide a permanent solution.
So the President and Mayor push the ball to each other. Until the presidential elections in 2022, in which Macron and Hidalgo want to run, the dramatic situation in “Stalincrack” will undoubtedly remain unsolved. (Stefan Brändle)
