IHardly a week goes by without the Minister of the Interior communicating about the repressive policy he is deploying to combat the use of narcotics. Published a few days ago, the annual statistical report of his ministry nevertheless describes a worrying situation. The policy desired by the Minister of the Interior, essentially centered on the repression of users rather than on the dismantling of trafficking, is proving to be discriminatory, inefficient, costly and worrying for public health.
Although the Minister and his departments communicate frequently on the operations to dismantle deal points, the fight against trafficking is not at the heart of police action. The number of people implicated for acts of trafficking decreased in 2021 compared to the two previous years (Interstats-SSMSI, Insecurity and delinquency in 2021, “Statistical report”, June 2022).
The police, on the contrary, focus on users with a massive use of the generalized “cannabis” fixed fine procedure in September 2020. This fine targets a very specific population: young adult male cannabis users in urban centers .
A fine that targets young adult men
While the Keeper of the Seals, Minister of Justice, authorizes the use of the fixed fine for three categories of narcotics – cannabis, cocaine and ecstasy/MDMA (dispatch from the Keeper of the Seals, August 31, 2020) – Cannabis represents 97.4% of criminal fixed fine procedures, much more than its prevalence in the general population estimated by the French Office for Drugs and Drug Addiction (OFDT) at 83% (OFDT, “Tendances n° 144”, April 2021).
Specifically, this fine targets young adult males. 66% of those implicated by the criminal fixed fine (AFD) procedure are young people aged 18 to 25, although they represent only 32% of adult cannabis consumers. Similarly, 94% of young people who have undergone AFD are men, although they represent 74% of regular cannabis users (Interstats-SSMSI, Analyze n° 38, Nov. 2021).
Finally, it is young men in large urban centers who are primarily targeted by the security services, with the bulk of criminal fixed fines being concentrated in the suburbs and a few large cities: Bouches-du-Rhône, Seine-Saint-Denis , the Rhône. We are a long way from the statements of the Minister of the Interior, who promised, on August 20, 2020, that the procedure would be applied “in the districts of Créteil as in
the 16the district of Paris “.
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