for Senator Étienne Blanc (LR), “We must hit the traffickers in the wallet”

Shootings linked to drug trafficking have increased in recent weeks in France. Is this a turning point?

This phenomenon is taking on considerable proportions, in fact. In the report that I submitted with socialist senator Jérôme Durain, we estimate that the sector’s turnover is between 3.5 and 6 billion euros per year. This financial mass accumulates, because a part is reinjected into the real economy. All this gigantic business explains the recent outbreak of violence.

How do you understand that she reached such a degree?

These traffickers are all competing companies. They are looking to steal customers. To occupy a space or chase out a rival, they shoot Kalashnikovs, threaten, kidnap or kill. Violence no longer has limits: burning a teenager alive with a blowtorch, dismembering a child… Even in a horror film, we wouldn’t dare imagine such things. However, it is a reality.

How have traffickers’ sales methods evolved?

Today, buying drugs is not difficult. If you drive to certain neighborhoods, you are screened upon arrival. It’s very organized: you’re told to follow a red arrow to supply you with cannabis, a yellow one for cocaine. It is also possible to order on the Internet via sites accessible to all. The customer just has to have it delivered. This system partly explains hit-and-runs. The young people who deliver have no interest in throwing drugs their way when the police are checking them. They bought their cargo with the aim of reselling it at a higher price to consumers. Most often, they try to outrun the police.

How would a national anti-narcotics prosecution change the situation?

Such a measure would make it possible to trace back to national and international networks. France needs a body with the means to flush out the people at its head (on the model of Spain, Editor’s note).

But we also need adjustments, such as making it easier to reduce the sentence of a dealer who communicates information to the police. Furthermore, like the government, I would like us to put in place what we call safe files. This system makes it possible not to reveal to defense lawyers how the evidence was found, and therefore not to disclose the methods of the police to the traffickers.

Is the fight against drug trafficking only a question of means?

Police need a satellite system to better monitor telecommunications or a navy with faster ships to intercept drug traffickers. We therefore need more resources, but we can acquire them without increasing the debt. One option would be to review the system of confiscation of “ill-gotten” property, that is to say purchased with dirty money. Being able to recover them more easily will save the State hundreds of millions of euros, and therefore provide colossal resources for our law enforcement agencies.

Is the essential axis in this fight to make this business as fruitless as possible?

Drug trafficking exists for one reason: money. Many dealers consider a prison sentence to be part of the risks of the job. But if their car or apartment is confiscated, it’s no longer the same thing. You have to hit them in your wallet. This is why our report recommends the creation of an injunction (order under threat of sanctions, Editor’s note) for unexplained resource. With this measure, if you cannot prove where the money to buy your car came from, it will be seized.

According to you, the former Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, lacked efficiency. For what ?

The “clearance” operations of recent months are not useless, but erasing these networks from the public highway does not always allow us to trace their origin. Moreover, we do not know precisely how many networks have fallen. This policy produces few concrete results, even though these resources could be mobilized elsewhere.

Where is the bill you tabled this summer?

The text is included on the Senate agenda for the week of January 27, 2025. The Ministers of the Interior and Justice took the time to secure it legislatively to ensure that it is well framed, because it affects freedoms. But we are confident: our investigation report was adopted unanimously, so this text should attract a majority.