“Every day, people pay the price for the drugs you buy.”
Amid record cocaine seizures and deadly shootings, the slogan is simple and aims to raise awareness among France’s millions of recreational drug users that their habits are fuelling gang violence and death.
With its new campaign against drug use and trafficking, the French government not only wants to make society aware, but also to make it clear that users will be punished.
“I want to break with this logic of victimisation, which consists of presenting drug users exclusively as victims of an addiction,” Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau told reporters on Thursday at the launch of an anti-drugs campaign.
“I am not the health minister. For there to be supply, there must be users,” Retailleau said, adding that he wanted users to feel guilty because they are accomplices of traffickers.
In 2024, the French authorities recorded 367 cases of murder or attempted murder, with 341 people injured and 110 deaths linked to drug trafficking. Of the 176 individuals jailed for murder and attempted murder, more than 25 per cent were aged under 20, including 16 minors. In all, 47 tonnes of cocaine had been seized in 2024, more than double the previous year’s total.
