Salty fine of 200 euros for drug users caught in the act, a repressive policy without effect for many associations. Explanations.
“We lost the war on drugs, a long time ago”. In Toulouse, the president of CREAI ORS Occitanie, Guillaume Sudérie, speaks of a useless decriminalization measure and advocates legalization. Interview.
“You have to be pragmatic, the problem with drugs is that we have lost the war since the 1970s” insists Guillaume Sudérie, president of CREAIORS d’Occitanie.
CREAI ORS Occitanie is a place for exchanges, meetings and development of practices. Surveys, knowledge publications, studies, support for the implementation of public policies…. It works in favor of social, health and medico-social action to promote health, the autonomy of people and their inclusion in society.
According to Guillaume Sudérie, this new measure can be a good tool for the police if it is well applied.
It is very effective on kids even if the verbalization does not apply to minors but for those who are dependent it remains ineffective
Guillaume Sudérie joins the discourse of many associations specializing in addictions and in particular drugs. Associations for whom “it is a hopeless illusion to believe that a repressive policy has any effect on drug consumption in our country”.
On the other hand, for Guillaume Sudérie, this new law is nothing more than a process of decriminalization:
if the consumer is verbalized, he will not stop taking drugs, especially if he is in a situation of dependency. It’s just a law to regulate public space.
Especially since the systems put in place between the prosecution, associations and social medical centers work well. Today we have made enormous progress, he explains, there is individual prevention, nothing to do with the programs of 15 years ago, all the institutions are working hand in hand.
Cannabis consumers in the sights
The Minister of the Interior Gérard Darmanin believes in this new system put in place since Tuesday, it will allow, according to him, to fight against drug trafficking:
it is the users who give rise to the traffic…the police will go everywhere because drugs are everywhere.
Guillaume Sudérie specifies that cannabis consumers are particularly targeted by this new measure. And there is no typical consumer profile, compared to other drugs like heroin or Ketamine.
The cannabis smoker is everyone, anyone anywhere.
According to a study published in 2012, the profiles of cannabis smokers are invisible precisely because of repressive laws, which is also why cannabis must be legalized according to him.
This would allow people to talk about it to those around them, to consult specialists and become aware of their addiction and to seek treatment. Because there are many cannabis smokers, in Toulouse the medico-social center receives more than 26,000 people a year for addictions to alcohol and cannabis. Every year there are more and more of them and the system will crack if we don’t give it more resources.
There are so many consumers in France, millions, in some neighborhoods there are impressive queues in front of building bars.
Generally people do not consume the product, they are confronted with it. Cannabis affects all social classes, from the 4th grade it plays a role of socialization and it is found as much in high schools in the city center as in those in the Toulouse suburbs.
Legalize cannabis consumption to dry up trafficking
It is not by verbalizing the consumers of narcotics and in particular of cannabis that we will dry up the traffic. To decriminalize is not to legalize.
This measure to eradicate cannabis trafficking cannot work, it will have little impact on the system. There are more deaths under the age of 30 linked to the violence of trafficking than deaths linked to the consumption of cannabis.
In Toulouse, as in France, cannabis trafficking is a lucrative market that is very well organized and managed by around 300 people, it is a very tense market that is very well supplied with few stocks and which pays off big. You should know that a building bar brings in more than 30,000 euros per day.
We must not stigmatize the districts because they are a handful to hold the traffic to the detriment of the population which it undergoes. The problem is that this trafficking organization relies on misery and accentuates it. The dealers appeal to young school dropouts or young people without papers. On leaving prison for many, they plunge back into this environment. There is very little stock, the police rarely find cannabis when they search buildings. The Toulouse neighborhoods generate traffic but they must be stigmatized for all that, they are the visible face of the iceberg, the dealer is the friend of the friend.
It is an unfortunate but real observation and that is why I say that we have lost the war against drugs, we must help people in the neighborhoods, legalization if it is well implemented could help to fight against traffic.
We must regulate the supply and take control, we must change the paradigm!
During the confinement due to the covid epidemic, the market has mutated
The two largest cannabis producers are Afghanistan and Morocco. In France Studies show that today 1/3 of cannabis production is carried out by consumers themselves. There is never a shortage, the traffic is very well organized.
Demand during lockdown fell slightly and prices increased. On the other hand, the supply did not weaken, the goods came as always from Morocco or Spain, cannabis arrives by the kilos or even by tons in the motorhomes of the grandfather who returns from Morocco, or even in cars who go back and forth between Toulouse and Spain, the famous technique of go fast. The dealers are very well organized and with the confinement a new form of distribution appears, home delivery. The consumer no longer takes the risk, the supplier takes it. An offer that could develop due to this new measure which aims to tap for many associations “in the consumer’s wallet” rather than eradicating traffic..
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TREND Device, Recent Trends and New Drugs
The national TREND system relies primarily on a network of seven local coordinations (Bordeaux, Lille, Marseille, Metz, Paris, Rennes, Toulouse) with a common strategy for collecting and analyzing information. The collection tools used are essentially qualitative. In the summary of the 2018 study, we discover the price of different drugs and new trends in the consumption of new drugs. The 2019 study will soon be published on the site CREAI ORS Occitania.
