[Regional disparities of the therapeutic injunctions of drug users]

The regular follow-up of treatment under court order, forcing the drug users to accept some medical care instead of criminal prosecution as per the clause of 1970's law, have improved the number of measures taken on the national territory, but with no possible comparison regarding the progression of detentions by police for illegal use of drugs. The implementation of this medical alternative was confined to the Paris area until the beginning of the 80's. It spread afterwards over the rest of the country although it did not affect all the departments, as the Paris area retained half of the taken measures in 1997. The collection of the data per department and statistics on detentions by police and sentences, allows the comparison of the respective parts of the legal trends of detained people for drug consumption, according to the different regions. The implementation of the law, that is to say the way the law is applied according to the courts, shows regional disparities which can hardly be attributable to the sole presence, or lack of, drug consumers in the regions.