French government appeals to consumers to help stem drug 'tsunami'
Cocaine use in France has nearly doubled and consumption of hard drugs like heroin and ecstasy is also rising, a study said last month.
Right-wing Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau has vowed to intensify the fight against narcotics and drug-related crime.
Retailleau on Thursday said France was confronting a "white tsunami" and he wanted consumers to take on responsibility.
"Behind these artificial paradises, there is a real hell," Retailleau said, accusing dealers of using teenagers as "cannon fodder" in their turf wars and causing civilians to be killed.
"To smoke a spliff or snort a line of coke is to have blood on one's hands," he said.
French authorities seized 53.5 tonnes of cocaine last year, more than double the amount they intercepted in 2023, the interior ministry said in a new report.
Seizures of synthetic drugs also more than doubled, it said, with more than nine million ecstasy pills and 618 kg of amphetamines and methamphetamines intercepted.
The minister shared a new awareness campaign video featuring flames dramatically racing along a line of cocaine, only to engulf a streetlight, car and child's stuffed toy.
"Every day, people pay the price of the drugs you buy," the voice-over said.
- Child victim -
In total 110 people were killed in drug-related violence last year, the interior ministry said, more than 10 percent of a total of 980 homicides last year.
That figure was less than the 139 people killed in 2023 after the end of a war between two rival gangs in the southern port city of Marseille, but still more than those killed in 2022 or 2021, a police source told AFP.
The ministry said a quarter of those arrested for murder or attempted murder linked to the drug trade in 2024 were younger than 20.
Those killed last year included a five-year-old who was hit in the head by two bullets during a car chase in the northwestern city of Rennes.
One tonne of heroine was confiscated in France last year, the ministry said.
Authorities seized just 101 tonnes of cannabis, slightly less than the year before.
A draft law meant to stem France's burgeoning drug trade has received unusual cross-party support. It has been backed by the upper house Senate, but still needs to be passed by the lower house.
The bill includes the creation of a new prosecutor's office specialised in fighting drug crime.
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