« Autumn brought chaos and confusion—but also hope—to France’s cannabis community. The season saw an increase in drug-related urban violence, police defeated by trafficking groups, a former Drug Czar and Home Office minister urging for reform in the Senate, the father of a girl illegally treated with cannabis speaking out, and hopeful changes in public opinion about cannabis.[…]
To a population deeply concerned about terrorism in the wake of attacks, this urban violence appears largely unnecessary and avoidable. This shift in public opinion, as well as the opinion poll and the recent statements by the country’s drug czar. reveal a major change in the French political landscape. Sen. Esther Benbassa of the Europe Écologie Les Verts (Green) party, knew it was coming.
After 2014, Benbassa had to undergo a period of political shock and isolation after her proposal to regulate cannabis was rejected by fellow senators, mocked by the media, and strongly opposed among the progressive political parties she hoped to get support from. But all this didn’t extinguish Benbassa’s desire to stir up Parliament on the issue. She commissioned the recently published opinion poll and used it to push the French Senate, a bastion of the punitive approach, to consider cannabis reform anew.
Together with Didier Jayle, who was the drug czar under President Jacques Chirac between 2002 and 2007, Benbassa set up a hearing in the felted venue of the French Senate, featuring an impressive lineup of speakers. Titled “Are we condemned to the stalemate?” the seminar reviewed 45 years of enforcing the current cannabis policy and squarely denounced its failure.
Among the participants were a superintendent of the National Police, who advocated for community-oriented policing and an end to hunting down consumers and other small-time offenders; a reform-minded former minister of interior affairs; and scholars from some of France’s most prestigious universities. Ethan Nadelmann, head of the Drug Policy Alliance, highlighted the special need for medical marijuana programs. His point was underscored by testimony from the father of a young girl suffering from Dravet syndrome, a severe form of epilepsy, who is being treated successfully with cannabis in defiance of French law. […] »
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