In opposition to the policies that the state government and the city of São Paulo have offered for Cracolândia, in the center of the city of São Paulo, activists and researchers propose actions that do not involve repression. The structuring of a program that promotes housing as a central action and the creation of a space for safe use, as in other countries that have dealt with similar situations, are measures that have been debated. In April, the Municipal Council for Drug and Alcohol Policies of São Paulo released a report evaluating the possibility of creating a space for safe use of drugs in the city of São Paulo. The document contextualizes that the measure would be within the ethics of harm reduction. Harm reduction “Harm reduction is a care strategy aimed at drug users and dependents, based on improving the quality of life, on the ethics of reception and on respect for human rights, and encompasses various practices, including exchange programs needles and syringes, substitution therapies, overdose prevention practices, assistance programs, housing, employment, and education. It is, therefore, an approach to the drug phenomenon that aims to minimize social and health damages associated with the use of psychoactive substances with legal provision”, explains the text. The document informs that there are 98 rooms for safe use in the world and 60 cities, and in Europe the policy has been in force for 30 years. The idea is to offer a space where people who use drugs can stay, avoiding “disruption of public order”, according to the text, and offering users care alternatives, from disposable supplies, such as syringes, to preventing the transmission of infections. , to monitoring by health professionals and social assistance. These spaces exist, according to the report, in several forms. The document brings the example of the Netherlands, where there is a “zone of tolerance, characterized by offering supervised accommodation – places of reception and hospitality – to homeless people. These spaces often allow the use of illicit substances, they are not characterized as a health area environment, despite providing harm reduction actions with users”. For São Paulo, the council document recommends the creation of a Coexistence and Cooperative Center for Alcohol and Other Drugs, which would be within the legal provisions that regulate the issue in the country. Naturalized violence Also in April, 40 civil society organizations held the seminar Cracolândia em Emergência, and the use of space was one of the topics discussed. For the activist of the A Craco Resiste movement, Roberta Costa, the context of extreme violence makes it difficult for people who use drugs to imagine what a more welcoming place without violence would be like. “This debate about spaces of use has this difficulty of horizon, of dreaming. In Brazil, the violation of human rights and police violence are so naturalized by these people, the ones who suffer most from it, that they cannot even imagine the possibility of a world where they are not beaten every day by the police. And that is very sad”, says Roberta based on the contributions of drug users collected during the seminar. However, she considers that before the mega police operation of 2017, when Cracolândia was concentrated in two blocks on Rua Helvetia and Alameda Dino Bueno, in which police repression was smaller and less intense, international specialists saw the place as something similar to a space of use or zone of tolerance. “I had the opportunity to take several international researchers to Cracolândia, people like Carl Hart and Liz Evans, who are specialists in harm reduction and use spaces from all over the world, and they always looked at that space – which has a lot of suffering, a lot of poverty. and it needs many things like water – like impressively cheerful use, with music”, he said about the experiences he had with the neuroscientist and with the person responsible for creating care services in Canada and the United States. For psychiatrist Flávio Falcone, the measure would reduce the conflict that has arisen in the region since the dispersion in May of last year. “A space for safe use, which would solve the problem of residents and people who use it and who are not going to disappear overnight. Not even the problem will be solved by compulsorily admitting everyone. We have to use the principle of reality, not the principle of my desire”, argues the doctor, who coordinates the Roof, Work, Treatment project. Housing first Falcone’s initiative offers housing for 13 people who were homeless. “Housing first. Not housing as a reward for an abstinence process, but housing as a right, before you do anything. In my point of view, it is not possible for the person to undergo treatment without having a minimum of organization, which is housing. This is what we do here in this project”, he said in an interview with TV Brasil. The improvement in people’s living conditions after they have the security of a roof over their heads is huge, points out artist and social educator Raphael Escobar, who works at Associação Birico, which also offers housing to a smaller group of people. “The time someone sees the bomb in the street and goes home because they need to take care of themselves, that’s a big step forward. When someone takes the money and buys a little food for himself to cook at his house, I think that is a huge step forward. When the person has a place to store things and not be taken by the police, I think this is a huge victory ”, he exemplifies. From this more stable condition, according to Escobar, it is possible for the person to be able to work and have autonomy. “People need to work, 80% of them cannot find a job. And it’s not working in a cafeteria at the mall. These diners don’t like people with no teeth. You have to understand the type of job, the peculiarities of the territory. Starting from a low requirement that, little by little, you can build the possibilities of walking”, he says.
Agência Brasil
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