Paris to try first clean drug room

SHOOTING GALLERY PLAN FOR GARE DU NORD AREA IS ‘AN INVITATION TO BREAK LAW’ BUT ALSO A CHANCE TO BREAK HABIT FRANCE’S first legal shooting-gallery for injecting drug users is to be tested

out in Paris, probably sited near Gare du Nord. The Prime Minister’s office said that the drug room – where users could inject under clean, supervised, hygienic conditions and without

throwing used needles in the streets - would be overseen by the Mission Interministérielle de Lutte Contre les Drogues et Toxicomanies and the Ministry of Health. No set calendar or precise

location has been revealed but Rémi Féraud, mayor of the Paris 10th arrondissement where the Gare du Nord is sited, said “this area needs it. It will improve both public health and public

safety”. Opposition MP Henri Guiano, a leading adviser to former president Nicolas Sarkozy, said that the move was “an invitation to break the law” and was “another defeat for morality”

after the moves for gay marriage. Help group Gaïa-Paris, which has already been awarded €36,000 to look at setting up a drug room in the city, said that the 10th arrondissement was already a

target for those on the margin of society as it contained the Nord and Est rail stations but coordinator Céline Debaulieu said a drug room would allow them to “work with drug users on their

habits and is a starting point towards care, taking control and breaking free of drugs”. In Europe, drug rooms already exist in Germany, Holland, Luxembourg, Norway, Spain and Switzerland.

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