1 TENDANCES Observatoire Français des Drogues et des Toxicomanies (French monitoring centre for drugs and drug addiction) PARIS CITY COUNCIL Nº 46 January 2006 www.ofdt.fr Update on research in progress Drug use by older adolescents in Paris Infra-communal analysis by the 2004 ESCAPAD Paris survey of people aged 17 François Beck, Stéphane Legleye, Stanislas Spilka The city of Paris seems to be particularly affected by illegal drugs, judging from health statistics (treatment requests, syringe exchange programmes, etc.) and police statistics (stopping and questioning people for drug dealing or drug taking). However, these indications refer largely to a marginal adult population, located in certain districts and well known through the activity of non-specialist care centres for drug addicts or from certain ethnographical studies. What about the adolescent population as a whole? This question can be addressed thanks to the ESCAPAD survey (survey on health and drug consumption statistics among those signing up for military service) conducted in Paris in 2004. It describes the state of health, sociability and drug use of Parisians aged 17. Since 2000, ESCAPAD surveys have been reporting national or regional levels of drug use and the changing trends of the various legal and illegal psychoactive products used by people between the ages of 17 and 18. Introduced under the authority of Paris City Council and OFDT, this fifth exercise is radically different from previous ones because it assesses only 1,552 17 year olds living in central Paris, allows for infra-communal analyses based on a division of the residential districts of Paris into four sectors. This simple and easily understandable division, using lines which dissect Paris from north to south and east to west, distinguishes areas that are relatively homogeneous but very different from one another economically and socially. This division draws rough contrasts between the more affluent image of the south-western quarter and the north-eastern quarter, whose population is more working class. Of course, other ways of dividing the city are possible. The aggregations made blur some of the disparities between districts – but these disparities are sometimes significant. For statistical