Cannabis fines postponed until 2020

According to from the JDD, the implementation of a flat-rate fine for public offenses involving the mere use of cannabis, aka fine Poulliat, will be postponed until the end of 2020. The fine should have been be tested in a few cities in France as early as December 2019.

The JDD notes that the delay appears to be purely technical. The CNIL did, in fact, take the Ministry of the Interior to task late last year regarding data retention. recorded by radar and stored by the National Processing Center (CNT) in Rennes—the same CNT that is expected to handle the processing of cannabis fines.

The test phase is nevertheless expected to begin «by June 2020.» And the public prosecutor in Rennes, Philippe Astruc, assures us that «everything will be ready by the end of the semester at the latest.».

Will these deadlines be sufficient for the Cannabis Fact-Finding Mission Will she assess the effectiveness of the fine, as she announced?

Fines for Consumers to Better Combat the Black Market

The reclassification of recreational cannabis use as a misdemeanor was enacted in November 2018 following the work of a «fact-finding mission aimed at assessing the impact of applying the fixed-fine procedure to the offense of illicit drug use » led by Robin Reda and Eric Poulliat.

Originally intended to ease the burden on law enforcement in order to « devote more time to combating drug trafficking«, it will ultimately serve only to penalize adult consumers in public and to record any violation of the narcotics law on their criminal record, without eliminating the possibility of imprisonment or non-fixed fines.”.

What if it had been presented as « effective and efficient«, it seems that at least one of the two adjectives was unnecessary 🙂