Des faits, pas de peur : les programmes pionniers de réduction des risques au Mexique

Des organisations comme l’Institut RIA et PrevenCasa offrent des services gratuits et sans jugement malgré un quasi-total manque de financement public. Pour en savoir plus, en anglais, veuillez lire les informations ci-dessous.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Under warm strobe lights and pulsing house beats, a recent festival in Mexico City offered more than music, food and booze. Amidst the usual festival fare, a booth provided free, anonymous drug testing.

The initiative, known as “Checa tu Sustancia” (Check Your Substance), is one of several recent efforts by Mexican civil society to reduce risk among people taking drugs. Spearheaded by the Instituto RIA, a Mexico-based drug policy research and advocacy organization, it aims to address drug use from a public health and social justice perspective, rather than a security one.

In a well-lit corner of the festival, members of the Instituto RIA used reagents and laboratory porcelain plates to test substances that some of the partygoers planned to use and recorded the data. Their analysis uses color changes to indicate what’s in the drug: It can reveal the presence of adulterants but not their exact proportion.