Prime minister rejects 'shooting galleries' for drug addicts

The head of France’s Senate, Gérard Larcher, has proposed a parliamentary commission into the creation of "shooting galleries" for drug addicts, an idea already firmly rejected by Prime Minister François Fillon.

Fillon’s "no" on Wednesday came in response to calls by his own health minister, Roselyne Bachelot, on July 19 for the idea to be investigated in France.

Shooting galleries allow drug users (predominantly heroin addicts) to inject their drugs in a safe and controlled environment. France has one of the higher incidences of heroin use in Europe (at 0.47% of the population), although it is far behind the European leader, Scotland (1.54% - the UK average is 0.81%), according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

“Matignon’s [the prime minister’s office] priority is the reduction of drug use, not to accompany drug users or to organise their activities,” Fillon said in a statement Wednesday. “Creating shooting galleries is neither necessary nor desirable in France.”

Fourteen other MPs who are members of the ruling right-wing UMP party have declared their opposition to the idea, saying such establishments "will not resolve any problems".

Despite Fillon’s rejection, Gérard Larcher insisted on Thursday that the issue should be properly debated and called for a parliamentary commission to investigate.

"This is a debate that needs to take place. It is parliament that should that should take on that role," he told Europe 1 radio. "I am completely loyal to the parliamentary majority, but the role of parliament is to be free of a number of government and ministerial constraints, and I believe there is a real debate to be had."

  Fewer deaths in Luxembourg

Luxemburg, which borders France and Germany, has had one gallery, dubbed "Fixstuff", since 2005. The project started as a mobile unit and a needle exchange. (Luxembourg distributes 500,000 clean needles a year.)

"The main priority is to save lives," the Luxembourg health ministry’s national drugs coordinator, Alain Origer, told FRANCE 24. "And there has been a big impact."

He added: "Since we started we have seen about 300 overdoses in our centre, of which half lost consciousness. These people would probably have died if they were not in a controlled environment.

"We also have fewer addicts, although it would be wrong to attribute this just to shooting galleries — what this programme has done is given people access to health professionals and the chance to get real help."

Origer added that as well as reducing mortality from overdoses, the state’s open attitude to its drug problem, including the distribution of hundreds of thousands of clean needles, had drastically reduced HIV contraction among addicts (well below homosexual and heterosexual contact) in Luxembourg.

Given the centre’s success, another one is planned for the south of the state.

Similar projects exist in eight European countries, including Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain.