French officials said Sunday that 145 people across the country, including 13 in Paris, reported that they had been stabbed with needles at an annual nationwide music festival on Saturday. Twelve people were arrested in connection with the stabbings.
“Some victims were taken to the hospital for toxicological tests,” the ministry said. French officials did not provide any details about the people who were arrested or about what substances the syringes may have contained.
While the number of victims was small compared with the millions of people who attended Fête de la Musique events across France, the reports were among a number of alarming episodes in recent years in which people have reported being injected without their knowledge or consent in crowded spaces like clubs or bars.
A British Parliament report, published in 2022 after a sudden increase in spiking incidents, said there had been more than 1,000 cases of needle attacks in the country between September 2021 and the end of December 2022. The report, which surveyed more than 3,000 victims and witnesses, cited police data showing that about 90 percent of needle spiking incidents occurred during the evening in venues like pubs and nightclubs, though some also happened at festivals and house parties.
The report noted that there was not enough information to determine the overall prevalence of needle spiking and that there could be many more attacks that are not reported.
The Fête de la Musique has been an annual event in France for more than four decades. Musicians of all abilities are encouraged to perform on sidewalks, in parks and other public spaces on June 21 — the summer solstice — and free concerts are staged across the country as well as in France’s overseas territories.
Before the festival, posts circulated on social media calling for such attacks on women, according to Le Monde and other French news outlets.
Laurent Nunez, the Paris prefect of police, said in an interview on the French news network CNews that the police were taking reports seriously, but also with caution. “This is not a new phenomenon,” he said. La Voix du Nord, a regional newspaper in the north of France, reported on Monday that one girl who said she had been stabbed with a needle appeared, after closer examination, to have been scratched.
Dr. Adam R. Winstock, a founder of the Global Drug Survey, which studies drug trends, and a professor at University College London, said that needle spiking is a “remarkably rare event.”
Even when it comes to drink spiking, a more common form of drugging people, toxicological analysis has shown that only a very small percentage of drinks that people think are spiked are actually spiked, he said. Similarly, only “very rarely” have the police received confirmation that a drug has been administered through needle spiking, he said.
Dr. Winstock cautioned that some of the reports in France may have resulted from panic as news reports of the stabbings spread. “Until there is toxicological evidence, what the story might be is that a group of people pick up on something they heard had happened to someone else,” he said. “Because you feel a sharp prick does not mean you have been injected with a drug.”
Needle spiking is “not the biggest threat out there,” he said, noting that a far bigger threat on nights out was people being taken advantage of when drunk or on drugs.
Aurelien Breeden contributing reporting from Paris.
Jenny Gross is a reporter for The Times covering breaking news and other topics.
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