French cannabis prohibition is a racist tool

Edito. France is light years away from taking a serious look at cannabis. Medical cannabis has been consigned to oblivion for this year, the status of CBD left in the hands of the Court of Justice of the European Union rather than entrusted to a regulatory authority, and adult use agitated at election time and then wisely put back in the cupboard for 5 years.

Elsewhere, the lines are moving. The champion of worldwide drug prohibition, the United States, takes a state-by-state look at this ban, which has caused more damage to populations than drugs alone, as Kofi Annan summed it up «Drugs are dangerous, but current drug policies are a greater threat because repression has become a priority over individual and health rights.»

The racist history of cannabis prohibition

Cannabis wasn't banned because it was dangerous, but because it made it possible to target communities deemed dangerous. The architect of prohibition at the time, Harry J. Anslinger, stated: «Most marijuana users in the United States are black, Hispanic, Filipino, and artistic. ... Marijuana leads white women to seek sex with blacks. ... Smoking makes darkies that they are as good as white men.»

These racial prejudices were then exploited by the Nixon administration when it stepped up the war on drugs in 1970 and declared cannabis «public enemy #1». Former Nixon advisor John Ehrlichman, later admitted «The Nixon campaign in 1968, and Nixon's subsequent tenure in the White House, had two enemies: the pacifist left and blacks. Do you understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be anti-war or to be black, but by making the public associate hippies with cannabis and blacks with heroin, and criminalizing both very heavily, we could tear these communities apart. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, interrupt their meetings, and slander them day after day on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about drugs? Of course we did.»

Making cannabis legalization a tool for equality

Let's face it, legalizing cannabis won't be enough to put a white person on an equal footing with a black person, in France or anywhere else. It will, however, stop making cannabis a tool of failure, and help open up opportunities for people who have been historically disadvantaged by the prohibition of cannabis.

This prohibition is disproportionately applied. Every year, over 140,000 French people are arrested for a simple cannabis offence, with no effect on either trafficking or consumption. In France, we don't have associations like the ACLU, which has been able to show that Blacks are 9 times more likely of being arrested for cannabis in the United States, with equivalent levels of consumption among all ethnic groups. But identity checks in France are based on the same mechanism, with over-representation of blacks and Arabs and a systematic discrimination by the police in certain neighborhoods.

The cannabis fine in France, which I like to call the Poulliat fine after the name of the MP who more than awkwardly wore it, is of the same ilk. This fine is explicitly targeted at cannabis users. Rennes Public Prosecutor Philippe Astruc, don't hide it The less demand there is, the more effectively we can act against supply«.

Obviously, I don't share this opinion. The essence of police activity in France has been tackling demand for 50 years, unsuccessfully on the. But if police checks are already racist, who will suffer more from this fine? which will record offences for 10 years with a criminal record?

On this subject, LREM is therefore perpetuating a racist dynamic and doesn't see it.

The refusal to question the ban on cannabis goes hand in hand with the refusal to take into account police violence, which essentially targets the same people. Today, cannabis prohibition is a repressive tool for targeting racial minorities, justifying police «efficiency» sanctified by the policy of numbers, and promoting social reproduction.

George Floyd died because he was Black. Adama Traoré died because he was Black. While few politicians draw parallels between the American and French situations, and while differences obviously exist between the two countries, cannabis is one piece of the puzzle that will lead to greater equality. Not just for the medical users who need it. Not just for the businesses that will be created. Not just for the adult consumers who enjoy it. But also because all lives matter.