We expected a new law on immigration at the beginning of 2025. Parliamentarians will finally work, in January, on a proposed law on drug trafficking, the result of the work of the Senate. The Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, wants “a general mobilization against organized crime”become “a threat to the fundamental interests of the nation”he wrote on Thursday, November 7, on the social network X, after receiving Bruno Retailleau and Didier Migaud. The Ministers of the Interior and Justice put aside their differences to present their plan against “whip” of drug trafficking in France, during a joint trip to Marseille on Friday, establishing this fight as “national cause”.
They are not the first political leaders to promise a ruthless fight against drug trafficking, organized crime and the underground economy that “gangrene our territories”according to established rhetoric. Insults on the subject have even become a classic of French political life. In 2005, the Minister of the Interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, wanted “clean the cities with Kärcher”. “We need a war on drugs”decreed his distant socialist successor Place Beauvau Manuel Valls. “We have to contain the octopus. This is the battle of Stalingrad.”declared martial Gérald Darmanin in September 2023. At the same time, drug consumption (5 million users in France, according to the Anti-Narcotics Office) continued to increase, as well as the number of trafficking-related deaths (85 in 2023). ).
But the threshold of tolerance seems to have been crossed in recent weeks, with a succession of tragic events related to drug trafficking: bloody shootings have occurred, in particular in Grenoble, Rennes and Poitiers. “Awareness is recent”says socialist senator Jérôme Durain, president of the commission of inquiry into the impact of drug trafficking in France. “When we released our report in May, some of our claims seemed exaggerated.recalls the elected official of Saône-et-Loire. Today no one doubts the reality of crime linked to drug trafficking. “We have reached a milestone”.
“Deideologize the topic”
On the ground, “The left-wing mayors are evolving on the issue, because the situation escapes them”We highlight Beauvau Square. “Drug trafficking generates intolerable violence”denounced at the end of October the socialist mayor of Rennes, Nathalie Appéré, while a five-year-old boy was seriously injured by automatic weapon fire in the Breton metropolis, a collateral victim of a settling of scores.
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