Health priority

Crack, Bombé: drugs and psychosocial consequences

Crack has come back in force in recent news in France.

© Shutterstock - Motortion Films

By: Caroline Paré Follow

2 mins

Crack in France, Bombé in the Democratic Republic of Congo... Two drugs that end up isolating. 

Advertising

Crack has come back in force in recent news in France.

These very addictive cakes (crystals made up, in part, of cocaine and other chemical derivatives) appeared in France in the 1980s. Since then, a small market has taken root in the northeast of the capital, and recently in Pantin, in Seine-Saint-Denis.

The leaders of associations such as Aurore, Gaïa, or Médecins du monde are convinced of this: compulsory hospitalizations, the treatment orders defended by certain elected officials are ineffective in health terms.

Their wish is to create a network of places for crack users, to get users off the street (and if possible from addiction) by welcoming them in a dozen small structures scattered around the capital.

After thirty years of public impotence,

a pattern begins to emerge to resolve the issue of crack in Paris.

For several weeks now, specialists, medico-social associations, Paris City Hall and the Ministry of Health have agreed on the need to act. 

"Bombé" is an artisanal drug made from the residue of exhaust pipes

appeared 2 years ago, and consumed by young people in Kinshasa.

The "Bombé" is considered "a public health emergency" by the director of the National Program for the Fight against Drug Addiction and Toxic Substances.

How to help these precarious populations?

What avenues should be given priority for the health and social reintegration of users?

• Dr Nicolas Bonnet

  , president of the

  PROSES Association

  , and pharmacist specializing in public health and addictology.

  Head of the young consumer consultation

  of the child and adolescent psychiatry department at the Pitié Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris

• Lionel Sayag,

  Director of

  the Reception and Support Center for Risk Reduction (CAARUD)

   and of the

  PROSES association,

  located in Montreuil and Saint-Denis

• Testimonial from a user-expert

• Dr Abraham Mifundu Bilongo,

  neuropsychiatrist, doctoral student, internship supervisor at the Neuropsychopathological Center of the

  University of Kinshasa

  (CNPP/Unikin).

  Addiction expert at the Interministerial Committee for the Fight Against Drugs and Crime in the DRC

• José Mendes,

  expert witness.

At the end of the program, we take stock of the mental health of students in France.

We talk about it with

 intern in Psychiatry in 9th year of Medicine at Paris-Saclay and general secretary of the

Newsletter

Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox

I subscribe

Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application

google-play-badge_FR

• Health and medicine

• Dope

On the same subject

DRC: arrests in the middle of the "bombé", a devastating new drug

Guest France

Crack: closure of the Eole gardens, "users have not disappeared, just wandering"

Great report

The hill of crack in Paris: approach to treat