Questioned on RTL this Monday, November 4 about drug trafficking, which has again claimed victims in recent weeks, including minors, the co-president of Place publique tackled the National Rally's proposal, affirming that he prefers to attack networks rather than consumers.
Raphaël Glucksmann and La France insoumise will have finally found a point of agreement. Invited on RTL this Monday, November 4, the MEP estimated that“send the police to hunt for stoners”as recommended by the RN, “is not the solution”. A position that Jean-Luc Mélenchon's party also defends. “It will overload the police force and in the end, we will not have them to focus on criminals, gangs, mafias”he added. The RN deputy Jean-Philippe Tanguy even pleaded on Sunday for “short sentences” prison for consumers.
While drug trafficking has claimed several victims in recent weeks, including a 15-year-old teenager in Poitiers last week, Raphaël Glucksmann explained that he prefers to attack the networks rather than the consumers. “The real problem is these drug traffickers, it’s these mafias” that“we must dismantle”, et “hit hard”.
“Mexicanization” of France?
At the same time, Manuel Bompard, political coordinator of LFI, spoke on Public Senate and regretted the “increasingly provocative speeches”. At the heart of this criticism, the words of the very right-wing Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, who estimated on Friday that there was a «mexicanisation» of France, on the sidelines of a trip to Poitiers after a fatal shooting. “The situation in France is serious enough and delicate enough to act concretely on the subject, and to avoid these cookie-cutter formulas”the Marseille deputy was indignant, recalling that the homicide rate was “twenty times more” important in Mexico than in France.
Like Raphaël Glucksmann, the LFI deputy defended a reorganization of the policy to combat drug trafficking, in particular the “development and strengthening of the judicial police”threatened according to him by police reform. Initiated by Gérald Darmanin, it places the police services of the department (judicial, borders, public security, etc.) under the authority of a single departmental director of the national police, reporting to the prefect, when before each section had its own director .
Furthermore, Bompard deplores the creation under the previous government of fixed fines against consumers, who according to him have not had “no results”. Et to castigate the “net market operations” organized with great communication support by Gérald Darmanin, then in Beauvau, in March 2024. These massive raids by police officers in several French cities had already been strongly criticized at the time for their long-term ineffectiveness against drug networks.
“Forty years of policy which was made precisely on consumers, which means that today only 10% of cases in court concern networks and traffickers, lead to a policy where, in the end, France is the country who in Europe uses the most drugs”notes, like Glucksmann, the head of LFI deputies, Mathilde Panot on France 2 this Monday morning. “It’s a patent failure”she insisted, demanding “resources for the judicial police”pour “to be able to dismantle the networks, to find the dirty money which is not in Mexico but very often in tax havens”. According to INSEE, drug trafficking generates 3 billion euros in annual turnover but the majority of the income is placed in offshore accounts.
