Drug trafficking: who deserves to be punished?

“The hardest drugs are available in all territories and all the time. The rejuvenation of people who kill and are killed is appalling. Drug trafficking is a root cause of violence and corruption”said Bruno Retailleau, the Minister of the Interior, during a trip to Marseille on Friday, November 9. These words reflect a reality, in France and around the world: the significant expansion of drug trafficking. In France, 600,000 people use cocaine at least once a year. Seizures of this hard drug have increased fivefold in the country in ten years, according to the Anti-Narcotics Office (OFAST), the police agency responsible for the fight against drug trafficking in France. An increase in trafficking, against which police services are finding it difficult to fight, due to the renewal of drug traffickers' methods: home delivery, internet platforms, local commerce are all practices which accelerate trafficking and complicate the action of law enforcement. How can we fight against the new forms that drug trafficking is taking? Would penalizing consumers more make it possible to stop this drug trafficking more effectively?