Gérard Darmanin in Choisy-le-Roi, September 1, 2020. -

ALAIN JOCARD / AFP

Gérald Darmanin on Wednesday asked the police and the gendarmerie on France 2 to carry out "every week" in the so-called difficult districts of "proactive operations" to fight against drug trafficking.

The Minister of the Interior announced that the day before "a dozen operations" had been carried out in several neighborhoods, which led to "33 police custody" and the "seizure of 12 weapons and more than 4 kg of narcotics ”.

On Tuesday, the flat-rate fine of 200 euros for drug consumers was generalized throughout the country.

"What matters are the actions", he insisted, while the right and the extreme right blame him for a lack of results.

Tested since June in Rennes, Reims, Créteil and mid-July in Lille and Marseille, this fine of 200 euros, which in theory concerns all drugs but mainly targets cannabis smokers, was generalized faster than expected.

A quick test in some regions

After a shootout linked to traffic in Nice at the end of July, Jean Castex decided to use it everywhere in France from the start of the school year.

The fine allows "to apply a sanction without delay" and to fight "against the points of sale which plague the districts", then praised the Prime Minister.

The drug circulates "in extremely large quantities in the territory of the Republic, not just in the working-class districts but also in what one could call the beautiful districts", recalled Tuesday Gérald Darmanin during a trip to Choisy-le- King, in the Parisian suburbs.

"The fine is one possibility among others of being able to penalize" consumers, added the Minister of the Interior, "it is not enough but it is necessary".

It is "a simplified weapon" for the police and gendarmerie, according to him.

The procedures for use often resulting in a simple reminder to the law, the fixed fine was thought by the LREM majority to fight against the “de facto decriminalization” of cannabis. 

What to facilitate the work of the police.

"It avoids dozens of hours of procedure to, at the end, have a simple reminder of the law", greets Stanislas Gaudon, general delegate of the Alliance union.

But this "umpteenth repressive measure" bristles doctors and magistrates.

Society

"The fixed fine misses its target", estimates the sociologist Marie Jauffret-Roustide

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