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Johan Leman, 28 October 2021

Maybe our politicians, also in the Brussels region, can deal with very serious matters from time to time.

I know quite well a street in Brussels city where there are at least three places where all the people in the neighbourhood know that you can go and get drugs at any time of the day. The police know these places, because their car stops there from time to time. They seem to be the only shops in the street that stayed open all the time during Corona.

In the neighbourhood of Foyer, a family once had to rush a child to the UZ, because the toddler had picked up a pill from the street and put it in his mouth…

In a podcast I had a few weeks ago with someone from a federation that cares for drug users, this person told me that there was a strong increase in drug use.

When I spoke to the mayor of Molenbeek recently, she told me that she saw tackling the drug problem as her biggest task at the moment. She talked about a business worth millions.

And now we heard Frédéric Van Leeuw on television explaining how serious the problem is.

Would our politicians like to have a serious parliamentary debate on this, with serious, concrete policy plans? This may take place separately in the various parliaments, but a joint debate would not hurt… or do institutional formats stand in the way?

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