What if we stopped acknowledging the failure of French public drug policies?

Edito. Tonight, France 2 is devoting its second half of the evening to the eternal question: «Drugs: a French failure? But isn't it time to stop repeating the same clichés and move on to the next, more interesting question: »How can we get out of this quagmire?.

To say that the subject is not new is an understatement. The failure of public drug policies was acknowledged in 1976, with the publication of the Appel du 18 joint in Libération. The Collectif d'information et de recherche cannabique (CIRC) reissued the same text in 1993, and since then has organized rallies every June 18.

In 2013, Chanvre & Libertés followed in the footsteps of movements calling for the reform of cannabis laws, and last year became NORML France, thanks to a rapprochement with the American organization. 42 years of documented failures, 16 Marches Mondiales du Cannabis, 3 associations on the case, and nothing has changed.

Yet the ineffectiveness of current drug policies in France leaves little room for doubt. If there's one subject on which everyone agrees, it's this one. Opinions differ, however, on the solutions to be adopted, and it is undoubtedly this theme that France 2 could have tackled with more modernity.

It would also have been an opportunity to reiterate that the government's plan to make cannabis users subject to fines is nonsense and a step backwards: instead of decriminalization, the plan is to add a systematic fine to potential prison sentences. A fine step forward.

Who can really believe that this will lighten the workload of the police or the judiciary? Many voices at the heart of drug issues (addictologists, magistrates, police officers, etc.) have explained the nullity of this project. But the Ministry of the Interior sees it only in terms of repression and prohibition. No wonder then that the report by Mr Poulliat and Reda begins with: « The purpose of this mission is not to consider the fight against drug addiction or the reform of the law of December 31, 1970.»

However, drug law reform is now a necessity. Not only to control and regulate drug use, but also to regain control over a sector of the economy that has been left in the hands of people who care little for the health of their customers, while at the same time using the revenue from drug sales to support prevention, reinvest in the Republic's neglected neighborhoods and give the police more resources to work on real missions.

The French are not mistaken: they are already 52% in favor of legalizing cannabis.

Public television could have taken the opportunity to put itself on their level and show that solutions exist elsewhere, or that it's easy to imagine a French model for regulating cannabis. Today, at least in the program's title, it remains stuck on a question to which we already know the answer. And it's giving us a «debate» we've seen 1,000 times before.