Drug policy in the election campaign: unmistakable misery

A young woman lies in front of a house entrance wearing only a T-shirt. She doesn't respond to being spoken to, her legs are bent, her vulva is exposed to everyone's eyes. A man staggers across the sidewalk, talking incoherently, his body covered in wounds, his shoes hanging in tatters from his feet. In front of a fence behind which there is a daycare center, a couple is greedily puffing on a crack pipe. On the other side of the street, in front of the windows of an empty row of shops, there is a sleeping camp surrounded by garbage.

Scenes like this take place on Schöneberger Kurfürstenstrasse on the corner of Frobenstrasse. The effects of crack consumption have also become a dominant factor at other meeting places in the open drug scene such as Kottbusser Tor and Görlitzer Park in Kreuzberg, Anita Berber Park in Neukölln or Leopoldplatz in Wedding. “The misery is obvious, you can no longer explain it away,” says Astrid Leicht, head of the Fixpunkt addiction support facility.

Crack is flooding German cities, the Süddeutsche Zeitung recently wrote in a report about Zurich and Dortmund, which are trying to break new ground in drug help. In Berlin, the number of homeless people suffering from addiction has increased dramatically in recent years. With 300 drug-related deaths in 2025, the capital reached a sad high since the turn of the millennium.

In the “Birkenstube” consumption room on Wedding’s Birkenstrasse alone – one of five drug consumption rooms in Berlin – crack consumption has recently increased by more than 50 percent: in the past 6 months, 3,303 “events” involving crack were counted there, in the 6 months before that there were 2,131. In contrast, incidents involving the use of other drugs – especially heroin – only increased by just under 8 percent.

The Senate Department for Health communicated these figures to Green MP Taylan Kurt, who is running as a direct candidate in Moabit North in the elections. The answer to Kurt's query is available exclusively to the taz. However, it also states that there are no surveys on consumption in public.

Kurfürstenstrasse, where parts of the scene camp, is a long-established street prostitution. After the fall of communism, poor prostitution dictated by drug addiction and organized human trafficking became established here; many of the sex workers come from Eastern Europe. Because of the increasing slums in the neighborhood, there have been repeated complaints from residents: condoms, syringes and feces were and are left behind in hallways, basements and children's playgrounds.

Since crack cocaine has spread, the situation has become more serious. In contrast to the past, there are no longer any fallow areas to crawl under. In recent years, Kurfürstenstrasse has been built up with real estate into which a well-off middle class has moved. But it's not just them, long-time residents are also protesting against the conditions.

Crack is much more destructive and addictive than other drugs. It is consumed 14 times or more per day, said state drug commissioner Heide Mutter in the taz interview. The pressure to consume is so great that some users don't sleep for days and become very behaviorally suspicious. “Many are in an absolutely precarious situation, they don’t have an apartment and don’t even have health insurance,” says Mutter. Some are highly aggressive, which also pushes the aid facilities to their limits.

In just under two weeks, Berlin will elect a new House of Representatives. An event organized by the Schöneberg Nord district council last Wednesday gave the opportunity to grill the direct candidates from the CDU, SPD, the Greens and the Left on the subject of drug policy. The meeting room in a senior citizen's home was packed.

The north of Schöneberg has a long history of “negotiating” conflicts in public spaces instead of solving them through social stigmatization, police measures and repression, said a representative of the district council in the introduction. The subtext: We don't believe in repression here.

The fact that parts of the audience saw things differently was shown by the cheers that Katharina Senge (CDU) received for her law-and-order stance: The CDU wants to ban street prostitution; throughout Berlin, prostitution should only be permitted in brothels. A representative of the advice center for sex workers “Hydra” sitting in the auditorium countered Senge by saying that a restricted area would only further exacerbate the problems in the neighborhood. The sex workers would then “hide even more in playgrounds” out of fear of the police.

Senge admitted that the drug support system also needs to be expanded. However, the priority for the CDU in all measures is to improve safety in public spaces for the benefit of residents. In order to get the scene off the streets, social workers or other “interfaces” would have to ensure that the addicts actually use the support facilities. She left it open whether this should be done with pressure or even coercion. At the end there must be withdrawal: “It is not enough to have facilities and distribute syringes”.

With Wiebke Neumann (SPD), Elisabeth Staudt (Left) and Sebastian Walter (Greens), you had to listen carefully to notice differences in their positions. The SPD, the Greens and the Left advocate accepting, low-threshold addiction help. There was agreement on this: no restricted area, no crowding out of the scene, expansion of decentralized support services and consumption rooms, close to the scene's locations. The SPD had already presented an ambitious immediate program to minimize the harm caused by crack consumption during the current legislative period, but the CDU reportedly failed to implement the 12-point plan.

In their election programs, the three parties appear open to taking new paths based on the Zurich or Dortmund model. In Zurich, for example, there is an addiction center where, according to the SZ report, consumption and micro-drug trafficking are tolerated, while outside there is zero tolerance for consumption and trafficking. The open scene on the streets there hasn't completely disappeared, but the conditions are no longer comparable to the conditions in the early 1990s.

Elisabeth Staudt blamed gentrification and social cuts for the worsening of the situation. For the Left, she announced a significant expansion of the Housing First program for homeless people. The package of measures presented by Wiebke Neumann included more police presence in the neighborhood “in order to take the security needs of residents into account.” Sebastian Walter emphasized that social problems need social solutions, but that more police and more security are also needed.

At least there was agreement with the CDU on one point: all four parties promised to work to ensure that “Olga” gets new rooms in the neighborhood: the only contact point for addicted sex workers on Kurfürstenstrasse will have its rooms terminated in the summer of 2027. In the future, municipal housing associations should also be given more responsibility when it comes to finding space.

The 42-year-old historian Anne Herbst (name changed) followed the discussion as a listener. She has been living in one of the new buildings in the Kurfürstenkiez since 2020. Your children are still small. From her window she looks directly at the meeting point of the scene, she tells the taz. At night there are sometimes fires and screams can often be heard.

Herbst has founded a residents' WhatsApp group, including senior citizens from the so-called Omabunker. “We are not conservatives,” she says. “We knew exactly where we were moving and could make a good living in prostitution if the conditions were compatible with the area we live in.”

Twelve daycare centers, schools, playgrounds and youth facilities are located in the neighborhood. According to the criminal code, prostitution is prohibited in these establishments. However, according to Herbst, this will not be enforced. What she would like to see is better integration between police and social work. After all, even the Swiss model doesn't work without repression. For left-liberal circles, however, this is still an irritating word.

If you follow the state drug commissioner, plans are underway for an addiction help center in Berlin. It should be called “House of Help”. Accommodation, emergency sleeping places, consumption room, express room, advice center and medical care should be offered there. Four of these centers, spread throughout the city, would be needed. Her impression is that this question has reached all democratic parties, said Heide Mutter, including the CDU.

Astrid Leicht has a similar impression: All parties have accepted that low-threshold addiction help is of essential importance. “Not just for those affected, but also for the residents.” The Mitte district is already trying to take a different approach at Leopoldplatz and in the Kleiner Tiergarten. A separation was created there with a privacy screen to enable the addicts to stay together and to keep public annoyance to a minimum, says Leicht.

In Schöneberg-Nord, however, the scene is currently in a bit of turmoil: Significantly fewer people than usual are sleeping in front of the closed shops, Anne Herbst also observes this. In the morning they take their belongings with them. “There is total nervousness.” She doesn't know who was behind it, says Herbst. She doesn't think that's a good thing: "Repression doesn't serve anyone."

Some addicts have migrated under the elevated railway. A man also set up camp in a driveway on Potsdamer Strasse on Saturday night. He hardly has any teeth left in his mouth. “I'll pack up immediately and take the garbage with me too,” he says, anticipating the expected accusations when he's spoken to. He seems rushed and full of desperation.