ANNE-GAËLLE AMIOT
The pointed criticism was delivered by Maud Bregeon, French government spokesperson, during the press briefing following the Council of Ministers on November 19, which largely focused on drug trafficking. “Sometimes, it is the bourgeois in city centers who fund drug traffickers,” she said, quoting President Emmanuel Macron. This reference to elite consumption obscures the reality of a much broader diffusion of drugs – cocaine in particular, whose sale is a main source of wealth for criminal networks.
“Normalization,” “mainstreaming,” even “democratization”: Those working on the ground (police officers, judges, social workers, healthcare professionals) have, for several years now, noted that this psychostimulant is spreading “everywhere,” affecting every layer of French society.
From a strictly statistical point of view, the French Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (OFDT) still estimates that there are five times as many cannabis smokers as cocaine users in France. But the number of cocaine users is steadily rising, and the gap is narrowing. In 2023, the reference year for the latest ‘Survey on representations, opinions and perceptions regarding psychoactive substances’ conducted by the OFDT, nearly one in 10 adults (9.4%) reported having used cocaine at least once in their lives, compared to 5.6% in 2017. This near-doubling over six years is also evident for so-called “current” use: That is, at least once in the past 12 months. In 2023, that applied to 2.7% of French people, compared to 1.6% in 2017.
You have 84.56% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.