Use of alcohol and illicit drugs in public and nightlife – challenges and suggestions for solutions for municipalities

The project consortium DRUSEC (drug use and urban security) comprises several German and French partners from different scientific fields, with a focus on social geography in the French part of the project and a focus on sociology in the German project team.

The project aims at researching the objective and subjective security risks associated with drug use in public or semi-public settings. These settings include “open drug scenes” as well as nightlife settings with a focus on “party drugs”, open street markets for cannabis or other places that are (temporarily) a spatial focus of drug use, including alcohol use. Measures that are able to significantly reduce the risks of such “drug places” for users and the general public will be identified and evaluated, using a complementary methodological approach as well as comparative research conducted in both countries. A special focus is laid on harm reduction measures like “drug checking” and supervised drug consumption rooms (DCR), but also on cooperation between law enforcement and social work and other features that may reduce subjective or objective risk in such settings.

Relevant settings in several French and German cities will be identified and researched using different cartographical and social scientific methods such as participant observation, semi-structured interviews, expert interviews, Geographical Information Systems, cartography and lexicometry. These methods will be applied in several steps and in different urban settings, taking into account the perspective of users, the general public, law enforcement and social work.