Louis Sarkozy and Marion Maréchal-Le Pen: two irreconcilable visions of drug decriminalization

The murder of Amine Kessaci's brother has, as always, rekindled the media debate about the decriminalization of drugs in France. On the one hand, Louis Sarkozy, which advocates abandoning the repressive model in favor of decriminalizing drugs, and on the other, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen which does not include the principle of decriminalization.

Louis Sarkozy: «Let's decriminalize all drugs to destroy the deal».»

For Louis Sarkozy, He believes that the current system has reached the end of its tether. He believes that France, like the United States and other Western countries, has «lost the war of repression». His arguments are based on the repeated failure of anti-drug policies pursued throughout the world for over fifty years.

He also criticizes Emmanuel Macron's recent assertion that buying cannabis makes you complicit in trafficking: «Buying cannabis means being complicit in trafficking. The President's statement is strange. For thirty years, medical science has been telling us that addiction is a pathology, an illness that can be treated like any other. And our political leaders are now saying that they are, in fact, criminals complicit in murder? That's pretty strange».»

For him, a paradigm shift is essential: «The truth is that we need to decriminalize all substances, all of them. By doing so, we destroy the deal market and liberate the individual.»

In its reasoning, the Portugal takes an important place. In his view, the Luso example shows that a model based on the prevention, l’investment in addiction and the risk reduction works: fewer consumers, fewer deaths, less violence.

«It's the opposite of laxity, it's efficiency.»

He also points to the inconsistency of the French approach to alcohol, which is widely accepted despite its harmful effects, while other substances, sometimes less dangerous in his view, remain taboo. With regard to cannabis, he considers that decriminalization would be an essential lever: a legal alternative would automatically reduce the black market.

«Persisting in error is not a policy. Changing the model is.»

Marion Maréchal: «We are dealing with extremely dangerous drugs».»

Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, on the other hand, seems lost. For her, decriminalization would mean making access to drugs more flexible, thereby aggravating already massive public health problems.

«I don't understand this discourse. [Once again, we're not dealing with recreational or soft drugs. We're dealing with drugs that are extremely dangerous.»

She places particular emphasis on the consequences of cannabis for young people (editor's note: for whom, decriminalization or not, nothing would change: cannabis would remain prohibited until they came of age).): «[...] as we know, cannabis, which is the most widely used drug, particularly among young people, has very serious consequences for brain development, school dropout and the development of illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolarity.»

Marion Maréchal-Le Pen refuses to see decriminalization as a response to the failure of security: «We're not going to legalize this crime as if the problem were going to be solved.»

She also cites the example of low-risk consumption rooms, which she describes as a «scandal», believing that they normalize usage and create massive nuisances for local residents.

«I'm sorry to tell you that this is a certain way, a way of saying it's not that bad.»

A debate that reveals two conceptions

Enter risk reduction and refusal of care, These two adversaries, who don't get on so badly on other subjects, set out two antagonistic visions of the role of the State in drug management: either to regulate in order to reduce harm, or to maintain prohibition in an attempt to prevent the spread of drug use.

As the traffic continues to provoke violence and tension, France finds itself at the crossroads of two paths: either radically reform its approach, as proposed by Louis Sarkozy, or maintain a strictly prohibitive model, as defended by Marion Maréchal, with familiar results. As for the media debate, it doesn't look like it's about to end.