'Shooting gallery' helps addicts in Europe's richest country

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Europe

Far from the glitzy bank buildings and boutiques in Luxembourg city sits a run-down prefab building behind the railway station that shows another side to Europe's richest country.

The tiny grand duchy nestled between France, Belgium and Germany has for more than 10 years played host to a busy "shooting gallery" to give drug addicts a safe space to inject narcotics.

"Here in Luxembourg there are around 2,000 users of hard drugs. For a country with 600,000 people, that's a lot," says Patrick Klein, director of the Abrigado "shooting gallery."

Abrigado – which means "sheltered" in Portuguese, a nod to the fact that the historic home of Luxembourg's largest immigrant community is nearby – opened in 2005.

Addicts gather at the Abrigado Center. /AFP Photo

It now boasts a consumption room, a day center with a medical service, and a night shelter with 42 beds.

The money to run it comes from a 2.7 million euro a year budget financed by the Luxembourg health ministry and the city of Luxembourg.

Between 2011 and 2016, the last year for which figures were available, usage doubled to more than 57,000 annual visits to consume drugs, which works out at more than 156 a day.

"It's going well. The chances of catching something are minimised, they've done that well," says drug user Patrick Steffen, 54.

Needle exchanges – swapping dirty needs for sterilized ones – rose by 25 percent in 2016, and is now "nearly 100 percent," explains Luxembourg health minister Lydia Mutsch.

Drug user Patrick Steffen /AFP Photo

This is a big step forward in a country where intravenous drug use has become the third biggest mode of transmission of AIDS.

Luxembourg's government has now decided to put two million euros towards the construction of a second shooting gallery, which will open at the end of 2018 in Esch-sur-Alzette, a southern town near the French border.

"We are going to take everything that is good about the current center, and if there are things that can be improved, we will do it in collaboration with the Abrigado team," says Jean-Nico Pierre, head of the foundation that will run the second shelter.

As for the risk of "social tourism" that comes from having the center next to a border in the Schengen passport-free zone, he is stoical.

"You can't deny that, because we have open borders. But there is also a humanitarian side that you have to respect."

(Cover image: A drug addict waits for a legal drug injection at the Abrigado Center in Luxembourg. /AFP Photo)

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Source(s): AFP