Bègles wants to experiment with legalized cannabis

The mayor of Bègles, a small town of 30,000 residents just outside Bordeaux, wants to turn his town into a testing ground for the regulated legalization of cannabis.

Mayor Clément Rossignol Puech’s proposal to pilot the production, sale, and consumption of cannabis in Bègles stems from two recent reports: one of the Fact-Finding Missions on Cannabis Use, which took place at the National Assembly in 2021, and the other from the Economic, Social, and Environmental Council (CESE) in 2023. Both reports came out in favor of regulated legalization of cannabis.

Convinced of the need to reform the existing legislative framework, the mayor of Bègles sent a letter to the President of the Republic earlier this year, outlining this pilot proposal.

«When I pressed the ‘send’ button, I felt that I had done my duty, "the Green Party councilman had said last March in an interview with Newsweed". »It was the first time I had spoken out publicly on the legalization of cannabis, even though it's a topic I've been familiar with for a long time.".

The mayor says he is motivated by several goals: combating illicit trafficking and the violence associated with it, relieving pressure on the judicial system, providing better support to users, curbing drug use among young people through quality control, and contributing to regional economic development by establishing a new agricultural sector.

https://twitter.com/clemrossignol/status/1665448482688184320

To this end, he plans to rally the nation’s leading figures behind his initiative. An op-ed published last weekend in the JDD and signed by some fifty prominent figures from all walks of life thus calls for «experimenting with a local model for cannabis legalization» and jointly developing «a model that meets the needs, expectations, and practical capabilities of our regions— a local model that actually works,» likely comparable in addition to what already exists in Switzerland and which is partly intended for Germany.

On Thursday, June 15, a roundtable discussion will be held in Bègles, featuring members of the French Economic, Social, and Environmental Council, the national secretary of the Magistrates’ Union, addiction specialists and physicians, as well as a CBD producer. This event, open to the public, aims to outline the desirable framework for a French model of regulated legalization of the production, sale, and consumption of cannabis.

All the information is available on the city hall's website.