The Green senator Anne Souyris has introduced a bill aimed notably at encouraging drug users to seek help in emergencies without fearing police intervention.
“We will not succeed in improving the lives of drug users with a repressive policy.” The Green senator Anne Souyris proposes a law aimed at better preventing the risks associated with the practice of chemsex. Specifically, two measures are advocated: no prosecutions for people calling emergency services in case of an emergency, as well as an obligation for dating apps to engage in prevention. “Repression is not only ineffective, but it is also deadly if it is not accompanied at a minimum by a prevention policy”, the parliamentarian argues.
“Emergency services are currently obliged to inform the authorities when they intervene in a context of drug use, the senator explains to têtu. It’s a deadly principle because it deters users from calling for help.” In fact, in the event of an accident related to chemsex (for example a g-hole), chemsex participants often do not dare to call the firefighters for fear of ending up at the police station for drug use, sometimes even leaving an unconscious person on the sidewalk before dialing 18 (or 112). Yet, in Paris alone, the police prefecture records on average one overdose linked to chemsex every twelve days (2023 data). And while mortality related to chemsex remains poorly measured by the authorities, the Drames survey still reported in 2023 more than 700 deaths attributed to overdoses in France, whatever the context.
Calling the Fire Department
To counter the deadly reasoning linked to the fear of the police, Anne Souyris’s proposed bill explicitly states that a person who requests emergency services intervention “cannot be prosecuted for the offense of drug use (…) or for the offense of possession of a drug (…) when the elements constituting the offense were observed during the intervention of said emergency services”. According to the senator, this so-called “good Samaritan” principle has consensus among field actors. “When I was deputy for health of the city of Paris, firefighters or the civil protection services were favorable to it, as were the services of the police prefecture”, she notes.
Another priority: better information for drug users. “There is an urgent need to set up information campaigns about the risks”, warns the senator, who wants to compel dating apps to disseminate prevention messages. “Associations do this work by creating accounts and engaging with users, but they are regularly suspended from these apps, notably Grindr”, she points out. This “go-to” approach, which has already proven its worth in the fight against HIV/AIDS, helps reach audiences distant from the usual risk-reduction messages.
Informing about chemsex
The Ministry of Health had promised to develop by autumn 2025 a national chemsex strategy, following the publication of the Benyamina report on the subject in… 2022. This report, commissioned by the government, already recommended using dating apps as a prevention lever, urging to inform as widely as possible: “Specific and homogeneous information on products, risks and harms should be developed by the health agencies and available for users, and the prevention and harm-reduction actors. In order to ensure the quality of interventions, an intervention kit should be developed by Santé publique France and distributed to field actors and the Regional Health Agencies.” Four years later, still nothing.
In this go-to approach, when she was deputy mayor of Paris (until 2023), Anne Souyris developed low-threshold consumption rooms, which today Rachida Dati, candidate for the Paris mayoralty, wishes to close. “But she offers no proposal, no alternative solution, retorts Anne Souyris. Moreover, if Rachida Dati stages meetings with residents, she has never engaged in dialogue with care workers, even when I proposed visits to these facilities.” And yet, all field actors know: in risk prevention, experience dictates pragmatism.
