prohibition kills – Libération

Ministers Retailleau and Migaud announced yet another anti-drug plan in Marseille on November 8. But it is not cannabis or its trafficking that are at the origin of the settling of scores, it is its prohibition. Even if no one claims that a form of legalization would silence Kalashnikovs, it would help regulate the market, recalls journalist Michel Henry.

The Marseillais are welcoming people; for two thousand six hundred years, we have seen “pekins” pass by. Also, the visit, on November 8, of two ministers who came to announce yet another plan against “drug trafficking” hardly caused any waves. We have seen this scene too many times of ministers rushing in, this time to announce a great “national cause”, without the situation improving. In Marseille, we read the future in the coke lines, and we already have the answer: their “plan” risks, like the previous ones, failing.

Let us recall this state of affairs: drug management is above all political. If we were talking about public health, this is what we would say: the worst drug, tobacco, kills 75,000 people per year in France. The second, alcohol (41,000 deaths), causes an annual social cost estimated at 102 billion euros (156 billion euros for tobacco). Cannabis comes far behind: it is considered responsible for 120 deaths per year in France, in road accidents (1). Yet the two deadliest drugs are legal. The State even heavily subsidizes tobacco dealers (called “tobacconists”), as well as wine producers.

That the