Street dealing, which is booming, is mobilizing the authorities and putting pressure on the health and security system. While cities are demanding measures against drug sellers, RTS spoke with one of them in Geneva to try to understand his daily life.
Inu left Nigeria in 2016 to flee the armed conflicts raging in his country. After applying for asylum in Italy, then in France, he arrived in Switzerland. Without legal status and living on the street in Geneva, he started the deal “to survive”.
Selling drugs allows him to have “a little money to eat”, explains the young man in his twenties at the RTS microphone. But he recognizes the fears and annoyance that arise among local residents when faced with street dealers.
“Keep a low profile”
“We tell ourselves that we have to take it slowly, keep a low profile,” emphasizes Inu in La Matinale. “We owe them that, we must not disturb them.” However, he believes that dealers are not the only ones to blame. According to him, it is also the sometimes heavy-handed interventions of the police in the neighborhoods which cause trouble.
Some “hit you, take everything you have”, but not all police officers are bad, says the dealer. “If he’s a good person, he will have pity on you,” he believes.
The residence permit as an escape
For Inu, the solution lies in obtaining a residence permit. He plans to apply for asylum in Switzerland to get out of “this kind of mess”. Not having legal status makes him a “prisoner”.
“I suffer for this, for having documents. Why else would I sell drugs?” argues the dealer. But Inu maintains the hope of being regularized and of being able to contribute financially to society.
A folding system
In Lausanne, Mike (not his real name) describes himself as a consumer refusing to “steal, panhandle or prostitute himself”. So, he says he refers “good customers” to dealers, who pay him in “materials” or “money”. “That’s how I manage to consume all day,” he explains in La Matinale.
The man “makes the task easier” for the dealers, especially when “the police are on the move a lot”, notably by playing the intermediary to receive a “commission”, as he explains on the RTS microphone.
Mike also says he understands the neighborhood’s annoyance regarding street dealing. According to him, “a good tout is someone who will avoid doing that under an apartment” or “in front of children”: “we will try to be as discreet as possible”.
>> Mike’s interview in La Matinale:
Radio subjects: Charlotte Frossard, Mehdi Piccand and Grégoire Molle
Adaptation web: Mérande Gutfreund
