after four months of work, the Senate commission of inquiry into drug trafficking in France draws up an initial alarming assessment

The president and the rapporteur of the Senate commission of inquiry into drug trafficking are in Marseille this weekend. After several months of work throughout France, they are worried about “the state’s failings” in dealing with trafficking.

There is an evolution “very worrying” drug trafficking in France. These are the words of the president and the rapporteur of the Senate commission of inquiry into drug trafficking in the country. Visiting Thursday March 7 and Friday March 8 to Marseille, where the war between traffickers lasted 49 words last year, the senators drew up an initial progress report after four months of work. They are worried about “extreme violence” traffic, and “failures of the State” to deal with it.

The observation is chilling, summarizes the president of the commission of inquiry, Jérôme Durain. He takes the example of Marseille: the victims of drug trafficking have never been so numerous there and the killers are younger and younger… During the hearings conducted by the senators, a Marseille magistrate affirmed that the war against trafficking was being lost. The president of the court called for a Marshall plan.

“This system floods the whole of France”

Hearing them was like a “walk on the edge of the abyss“, explains Jérome Durain: “When you have magistrates who talk about gangrene, when you have residents who tell you that they cannot go home after a certain time in the evening, when you see kids who are victims of homicides: there are what makes you dizzy.”

Drug traffickers are increasingly aggressive and adapt like a liberal enterprise, worry the senators of the commission of inquiry. And the phenomenon is far from being limited to Marseille. After traveling from Seine-Saint-Denis to the Meuse, from Burgundy to Lyon, the rapporteur, Etienne Blanc, insists that drug trafficking concerns all of France: “What struck us is that, once reserved for the very urban sector, now this system is flooding the whole of France. In Côte-d’Or, we seized a laboratory in a village“, he explains.

The rapporteur and the chairman of the committee of inquiry speak of an asymmetrical war against drug trafficking. In the report that they will present in May, they intend to propose measures to give the state the weapons to fight.