Fifty years after the 1970 law on the fight against drug addiction, the French Observatory for Drugs and Drug Addiction (OFDT) takes stock of the crackdown on drug use. The penal code, which provides for a penalty of up to a fine of 3,750 euros and a year in prison, is one of the most repressive in Europe. Even if in practice the prison sentence is exceptional for this offense.
The medical support component of the legal response has almost disappeared over time. The therapeutic injunction ordered in respect of these people considered in 1970 to be both delinquent and sick was requested by the prosecutors of the Paris region in 3% of alternatives to prosecution in 2019, against 14% in 2005.
One of the reasons given by Ivana Obradovic, deputy director of the OFDT, is “The less and less individualized treatment of this mass dispute”. Some 130,000 people were arrested in 2020 for drug use. The police and justice approach this phenomenon by drawing inspiration from the treatment of traffic offenses. Namely a standardized penal response which increasingly resorts to the fine.
The policy of numbers has been inflationary in terms of arrests in the street and at the foot of buildings, since this allows the recognition of an offense and its resolution to be recorded at the same time, without the need to carry out an investigation. The proportion of cases closed without further action has thus been divided by ten in twenty years, to 2%. The alternatives to prosecution are relatively stable, at 65% of the criminal response.
Contrary to popular belief, however, the proportion of criminal prosecutions has increased sharply, going from 15% to 32% in fifteen years. The use of narcotics now represents more than 7% of the total offenses sanctioned in France by a tort conviction (i.e. excluding contraventions and crimes), “A figure unmatched for thirty years”, notes the study. These are not correctional referrals. This is particularly linked to the development of penal ordinances, which make it possible to pronounce a fine without a hearing… as for traffic offenses.
Development of awareness training
The generalization to the whole of the territory of the fixed tort fine since September 2020 should increase this phenomenon. Against the return of the product in his possession, the user is sanctioned with an electronic report of a fine of 200 euros (reduced to 150 euros in the event of payment within fifteen days or increased to 450 euros beyond forty -five days). In four months, 27,300 verbalizations of this type were made, with a higher frequency in certain departments such as Seine-Saint-Denis (148 verbalizations per 100,000 inhabitants) or Bouches-du-Rhône (138), very much in the -beyond the national average (41). But, behind these important figures, the recovery rate of a affected population, which is often poorly solvent, remains low.
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