French mayors are alarmed by a country conquered by drug trafficking

Regularly challenged by fellow citizens worried about their safety, the mayors of France, meeting in Paris, are concerned about drug trafficking, particularly cocaine, in rural and urban areas.

With some 3,000 deal points, 240,000 people make a living from this traffic which generates a turnover estimated between 3.5 and 6 billion euros (between 3.2 and 5.6 billion francs). To the point that for the first time, the Congress of Mayors of France took up the issue this week.

“I sounded the alarm three years ago by going to rural departments that I had known well when I was young, where I clearly saw deal points in the town centers, areas sometimes production and distribution relays,” testified David Lisnard, president of the Association of Mayors of France.

The mayor of Cannes also recounts how his city has been transformed under the effect of drug trafficking, with the proliferation of money laundering establishments: firstly “kebab shops which never have a customer, but report large figures of business, then pizzerias and now barbers.

Same cause, same effects in Morlaix, a town of 15,000 inhabitants in Brittany, which has been facing a “very sharp increase in the volume of drug trafficking” for several years, according to its mayor, Jean-Paul Vermot. And with its share of violent crimes, such as the stabbing murder of an 18-year-old young man, in 2021, in the neighboring seaside resort of Carantec.

“We see increased violence in the street, particularly with the consumption of cocaine and substances like MDMA or crack,” continues the elected official, whereas before, “we had to face falling asleep with hashish.” .

The situation is also worrying in French communities in the Caribbean. José Mirande, mayor of Marin, in Martinique, describes the “huge increase in crime. There were 23 murders last year, 24 this year already, with a social situation, 25% unemployed, which amplifies the mule phenomenon.

According to the French gendarmerie, 75% of cocaine seizures in 2024 were made either in the Antilles-Guyana or on national territory coming from the Antilles-Guyana.

The estimate of drug sales, estimated at up to 6 billion euros, is not very far “from the budget of the French Ministry of Justice, which is 7.5 billion”, underlines Senator Étienne Blanc. For his colleague Jérôme Durain, “there is a territorial extension of the problem” affecting “village France and no longer just the large metropolises”. “We are not yet in a narco-state, a “Mexicanization”, but there is a slippery slope,” he laments. With, as a result, settling of scores, murders, arms trafficking, etc.

“Small towns are not immune with new forms of sales, uberization, 30 to 40% of consumers having their cocaine delivered to their homes,” recalled gendarmerie colonel François Devigny, who spoke during this meeting. Faced with this, the seizure of criminal assets is tiny.

For the mayor of Morlaix, we will not resolve this question of public order “if we do not thoroughly address the question of public health”, in particular through preventive actions with young people.

“Crime pays, ill-gotten wealth almost always benefits, so we must have a different strategy and work on narco-laundering to detect illicit capital, the recycling of dirty money and seek investments in France and abroad” , he emphasizes.

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