The coronavirus and its confinements have not been without effect on drug users. The French Observatory for Drugs and Drug Addiction (
OFDT) publishes its annual survey on Recent Trends and New Drugs (TREND) devoted to Marseille and the Paca region.
This study is based on ethnographic observations, that is to say directly with the actors, carried out on the one hand in a party environment and on the other hand on populations in a precarious situation. It also compiles the data collected from the authorities, police and justice services, and addiction centers and during defense and citizenship days (JAPD).
“Private parties, either at home, gave rise to more dense consumption, with larger and less spaced outings of products,” notes Claire Duport, the author of the study. “The quantity consumed was not necessarily greater in an open party environment, such as a festival, club, or free party, but it is achieved over a shorter period of time,” she explains.
“You arrive at 6 pm, you drink, you follow in your footsteps. In short, we’re pissed off ”
An effect summarized by this testimony from a frequenter of the festive worlds, from the report: “These evenings are all alike. You arrive before 6 p.m. so you don’t get a fine. If you’re lucky that your neighbors aren’t boring and your ass is lined with noodles, maybe there will be a dj and you can dance. But basically, it’s you drink, you take your tracks, you are perched at midnight and it can last until the next morning. In short, we all live the same evenings and we piss off ”.
Another trend stated by Claire Duport, the transfer of drug users to other products, both more easily available and more suitable for evenings in apartments. “Typically, MDMA or ecstasys are not necessarily made for less dance parties, in small apartments”. This has resulted in deferrals on other products, such as ketamine.
Also, “the traffic networks have adapted very quickly”, developing and expanding their delivery area, not hesitating to communicate on social networks. This allowed people “well integrated in the social networks linked to the party to maintain, even increase” their consumption during the period of confinement. Conversely, those less integrated and living in the countryside were able to reduce their consumption or switch to other legal products (alcohol, medicine).
Last point, a speech on the consumption of nitrous oxide, “more visible but not new”, considers Claire Duport who does not subscribe “to the current moral and media panic”. Words tempered by an exchange with a young pharmacist from the public, who works in a risk reduction association and observes more massive consumption, between adolescents and without initiation that can “go from 50 to 100 balls in one evening”. This causes “troubles that we did not see before”. Some requiring hospitalization and rehabilitation after severe vitamin B12 deficiencies caused by acute nitrous oxide poisoning.