While buying or renting a house, people pay attention to a lot of different factors: building, neighborhood, infrastructure, schools, or rehabilitation rehabs for addicts. In the last case, you would like to spend more time studying different locations to live. Start with googling inpatient drug rehab near me if you are free to relocate to any American city in order to provide the best care for your family member. On AddictionResource, you'll find a comfortable map with various rehabs throughout the country, which also contains an address, phone number, and rating of a particular facility.
In this article, we talk about the ways different worldwide cities deal with drug addicts and how it affects their citizens. Starting with the US, we move further to Canada and Europe so that you could have a general idea of where it is the most convenient to live if you have problems with drugs.
San Francisco, US
In January, a San Francisco forensic physician published a shocking report: last year, drugs killed three times more residents than coronavirus - 699 people versus 235, writes Le Monde. This is an absolute record: in 2019, an overdose caused the death of 441 people, which is already 70% more than in 2018 (259 people). Thus, in San Francisco, where one of the lowest death rates from coronavirus among all states, an average of two people per day died from illegal substances throughout the past year. This "quiet" pandemic is thriving in the center, on non-mainstream streets, and in hotels for the poor.
As in the rest of America, most overdoses involve the synthetic opioid fentanyl, which is five times stronger than heroin. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), between May 2019 and May 2020, an overdose of the drug killed 91,000 Americans - more than the Vietnam War casualties or the number of road traffic fatalities since 2017.
Fentanyl was launched in San Francisco in 2018, and 500 mg of the substance is now available for $ 20 in Tenderloin, a haven for dealers and homeless people for decades. According to the French newspaper, this area accounts for a quarter of deaths in the city: due to quarantine, it has become an open-air drug market. Locals and Homeless Associations have accused the government of being inactive and that they perceive the Tenderloin as a ghetto where crime is tolerated to keep the rest of the city safe. In May 2020, UCLA Hastings College of Law and other townspeople sued the administration after counting more than 400 tents in the area. The mayor's office has ordered the homeless to be accommodated in cheap hotels and allowed official tent camps to be set up in parking lots.
The pandemic has exacerbated the drug problem in San Francisco, the article notes. "The golden rule for overdose prevention is not to let people be alone," explains Kristen Marshall, head of the City-funded DOPE Overdose Prevention Project. Quarantine, on the other hand, forced social distancing and interrupted the work of help groups working in the quarter.
According to a map compiled by The San Francisco Chronicle, most of the overdose deaths lived in hotel rooms provided by the mayor's office for the homeless. Some were found only after a few days. Others died in the streets from the cold. According to the forensic doctor, 76% of the deaths are men.
Different statistics show that the number of deaths from overdose began to grow in March with the introduction of quarantine: if in January 2020, 38 deaths were recorded, then in April - already 52, in May - 71. This "quiet" epidemic could lead to a greater number of victims if Naloxone, an emergency drug to neutralize the effects of opioids, would not have saved 3,400 people, DOPE said. The organization distributes life-saving kits (antidotes, sterile syringes) and trains community workers and families to detect overdose.
Vancouver, Canada
Against the growth in opium drug use throughout North America in Vancouver, Canada, the government decided to approach drug addiction treatment in the most radical way - to allow addicts to take illicit drugs under the doctor's supervision which is a kind of rehab near me. In Vancouver, the first controlled drug-use facility in North America, called Insite, opened. Now Insite has become a laboratory for experimental testing of new drug dependence treatment methods.
Since opening in 2003, Insite Clinic has become an integral part of downtown Vancouver. Everything here sparkles with cleanliness, the atmosphere is like in a modern hospital - the exact opposite of the dirty back streets where drug addicts gather. In June 2017 alone, over 10 thousand people came here for doses. In 14 years, only one person has died of an overdose at Insite or any other controlled drug site in Vancouver. Patients at the clinic are allowed to use their own drugs under the supervision of a doctor or nurse. Insite helps connect drug users to other social services such as housing and mental health treatment. It also provides detoxification services that can help people get rid of drugs for good.
Numerous articles in the British Medical Journal and the Lancet substantiate Insite's claims that these methods can cure disease, reduce delinquency and actually help people get rid of drug addiction forever.
Thanks to these studies, authorities in other cities in North America are interested in similar items. To date, Health Canada has licensed 16 controlled drug use clinics across the country. The neighboring American Seattle also hopes to open a similar point.
Insite is accused of the fact that the clinic refuses to fight drug addiction, from attempts to cure drug addicts. The current director of the center, Mark Lisishin, is convinced of the opposite.
"We help those in need, help them survive and move on to treatment or detoxification," he says.
Paris, France
The Parisian authorities have bricked up a tunnel under the ring road in the north to prevent drug addicts from entering the area. This was reported by the BFM TV channel.
In September 2021, Parisian police deported 130 drug addicts from the Stalingrad area and the Jardin-d'Eole park due to complaints about the deteriorating crime situation that had continued for many months. Violators of public order were detained and taken to the ring road, where, according to the authorities, a "high-security zone" was set up to prevent drug addicts from entering the Aubervilliers and Pantin suburbs.
The decision of the city authorities angered local residents. The mayor of the suburb of Pantin drew attention to the fact that the closure of the tunnel will not interfere with the movement of drug addicts if they want to enter the communes since anyone can simply bypass this wall along the passages located 100 meters from it. Additionally, it's difficult for the addicts to find "drug rehabs near me", which are not very accessible in France.
The Paris authorities have assured that this is a temporary measure designed to prevent the evacuated intruders from occupying the tunnel. In addition, according to them, a police squad will be on duty near the walls at night to prevent drug addicts from destroying it. However, according to eyewitness reports, soon, most of the police left the park, and the offenders began to disperse into the neighboring streets.
