Faced with drug trafficking, ways out of the failure of “all-repressive”

2023-09-25 08:00:10

The expression sounds like a refrain, the posture has an air of déjà vu: against drug trafficking, it is ” the war ” that a true leader must declare. It has been more than fifty years, in June 1971, that Richard Nixon summoned her to the United States. On September 8, in an interview with ParisianGérald Darmanin, Minister of the Interior, spun this martial metaphor by specifying that he now intends to lead “The Battle of Stalingrad” (in reference to the Parisian district of the same name) against traffickers.

The victories highlighted by the executive are expressed through the results of the seizures, constantly increasing (more than 150 tonnes in 2022 compared to 115 tonnes the previous year), and the “deal points” dismantled. These counts are intended to be reassuring. They mask another reality: the insolent health of the drug market, more available than ever, at a controlled price, despite an immutable doctrine of all-repression.

Faced with constantly regenerating trafficking, specialized police officers and magistrates repeatedly invoke the myth of Sisyphus pushing his rock indefinitely; or talk about “the ocean emptied with a teaspoon” when, for a few bars of shit seized and a handful of “choufs” arrested, neither the goods nor the staff will be lacking the next day. As for the courts, they are embolized by the appearances of “little hands”. Hearings where the law of silence reigns.

The threat is constantly evolving

“Pounding” the deal points has not dried up the supply and even less pacified the neighborhoods where territorial struggles have claimed more than seventy victims since the start of the year. A situation denounced in a forum at Monde by around fifty mayors, Thursday September 21, calling for a “national and European plan against drug trafficking” particularly in “generalizing heritage surveys” without neglecting the health aspects, in terms of prevention and care.

This request for an ambitious and global response makes sense, while the deployments of CRS 8 as an immediate response to violence linked to trafficking as well as the announcement of the creation of a new specialized investigation unit are struggling to convince the field investigators.

Also read the analysis (2021): Article reserved for our subscribers In Marseille, drug trafficking thrives on the abandonment of the city

The threat is constantly evolving because, like innovative companies, criminal groups have been able to seize the digital revolution, develop multi-product offers, and establish partnerships with suppliers and brokers foreign (“intermediaries”). To destabilize such an enemy, public policies must take into account the different levels of the “spectrum » criminal.

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