How effective is the future «stup' plan» in France?

Edito. 4 ministers met this morning in Marseille to announce the implementation of a new anti-drugs plan in France. The meeting's biggest omission? The Minister of Health. The tone was set: cannabis is only a repressive issue. Grouped around 6 main themes and 55 measures, the (laudable) aim is to strike a blow against drug trafficking in France. But if 50 years of prohibition have failed, how do we go about it? Move up a gear«, says Castaner.

For those of us who strongly believed in the effectiveness of the’fine Poulliat (irony), which we were promised that it would enable police forces to focus on the fight against drug trafficking., is a definite disappointment. It is not still not implemented, As David Le Bars, General Secretary of the French national police commissioners' union, explained this morning on France Info, who sees it only as a «tool», provided that «we can collect [and] levy this fine». Shame we didn't think of it sooner. Nicole Belloubet specified later in 2020.

So 55 measures, and no set targets. This will make it easier to communicate on the success of this plan, which runs counter to an entire international context. Of course, everyone is familiar with the cannabis situation in France: the most repressive country in the world, and the leading cannabis consumer in Europe.

While the failure to crack down on drug use is now internationally recognized, that the Luxembourg to legalize cannabis, which the Netherlands are partly spending to national production that is supervised and regulated, that Portugal has decriminalized all drugs in 2001, like all our neighbors, while our Minister of the Interior was a fervent advocate of cannabis legalization, while 33 American states have legalized medical cannabis and 11 recreational cannabis, that the Canada and Uruguay that the Mexico and the’South Africa have declared its ban unconstitutional and are in the process of legislating, the French executive finally has just one word on its lips: repression.

Omo washes whiter than white

The future crackdown on trafficking will be based on these 6 key points:

• replace OCRTIS with Ofast, to «forget» the numerous cases of illegal cannabis imports. The new body will be equipped with 150 investigators and 16 regional offices.
• improve information feedback on the state of the market, both statistical via MILDECA (who already find it difficult to separate hemp and cannabis) and pragmatic, for example by mapping out deal points
• creation of a slumdog plan, to make it easier to report the hottest drug dealer in your area
• seize more of the accused's assets
• strengthen international cooperation, particularly with the Benelux countries. This could be an opportunity to look at the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
• and overall increase budgets dedicated to the fight against trafficking

Apart from technical innovations and new investigative techniques, the plan remains along the same lines as over the past 50 years. Prevention will be addressed via health and criminal risks. And the management of addictions will be included in the 2018-2022 plan. which also promised nothing new. The fight against drugs was already costing France 680 million euros a year, without making a single cent. Even Hadopi didn't dream of it.

And yet, a sure-fire failure

If it's so typically French to play the bird of ill omen, here's what might objectively point us in the direction of yet another failure of public drug policy in France:

• Repression has failed for 50 years in France.
• Christophe Castaner doesn't believe in his plan. He does said himself just 4 years ago about cannabis trafficking: «it's not the penalties that prevent trafficking».
• Mexico, which sent in the army to fight the cartels and launched a war on drugs that killed over 100,000 people, ended up legalizing the drug.
• the more prohibited a product is, the more interesting it is for the black market. That, at least, is the conclusion of a Belgian traffic study.
• cannabis acquisition channels are no longer limited to the oven. In fact, measure 13 of the plan calls for a study «to improve surveillance of the postal vector». If this were the only...
• the success of a law enforcement policy can't just be celebrated by an increase in seizures. This figure is meaningless. At most, it indicates an increase in Customs activity. But without knowing what is not being seized, this figure serves no purpose other than navel-gazing. 500 tonnes are consumed every year in France. Patting ourselves on the back for having stopped 100 of them, without even specifying whether they were destined for the French market, is just a figure. Not efficiency.
• if supply becomes scarce - and this is highly unlikely from now on - the consumer alone will pay the price: more expensive products, more cut, stronger, cartridges of THC with lethal diluents, synthetic cannabinoids... But no less available...

«France will not be a playground for traffickers», concluded the Minister at the end of his presentation. All these elements, and the last 50 years or so in the world, lead us to believe, on the contrary, that the only winners of this anti-stup plan will be the traffickers.