All the way up the penal chain, in charge of implementing repression, police and gendarmes can make the daily and overwhelming observation of the failure of the current public policies on drugs and its various perverse effects.
France is the most repressive country in Europe, yet the prohibition introduced by the 1970 december's law did not reduce drug consumption or crime. On the contrary.
With a wealth of experience and exercise of public security on fieldwork, the Police Contre la Prohibition collective aims to provide a testimony so far unheard, to educate lawmakers and the public on the ineptitude of prohibition and its disastrous consequences. It further intends to undermine the many taboos and assumptions which preclude rational thinking about drugs.
Our collective extends its thinking to police practices and culture : drug use repression, law enforcement management consisting only in achieving statistical goals, and that of conducting systematic identity checks are interdependent. They actually form a toxic system which neither serves public safety, and public health, nor public service itself.
PCP contemplates being a source of proposals and of information. Equally, PCP’s goal is also to participate in the emergence of a public debate on drugs policies, and to promote a political and penal alternative to the current situation.
If law enforcement agrees that repression is useless, it's necessary to question why...
• The PCP is supportive of decriminalizing the use of all narcotics, and of a realistic and consistent drugs policy based on prevention, information and harm reduction. The repeal of article L.3421-1 of the Public Health Code is the absolute prerequisite to a legislative change.
• The PCP considers it necessary to implement fastly a regulation of the cannabis market.
Trafficking, crime, violence and the insecurity wich they bring about are devastating. Curbing traffic stands as a public safety and public health emergency. More and more countries are experiencing the success of a controlled legalization of cannabis. Why not France?
• PCP believes that drugs are much less of a scourge than prohibition itself.
Drug users and occasional experimenters, whom the law considers to be "sick-delinquents", often have late access to information, recommendations related to consumption, and care when necessary. The sword of Damocles of the repression hampers prevention and harm reduction undertakings.
Drugs, from the most trivial or the most controlled use, to the most problematic addictions, are matters of public health.
• The PCP collective will advocate simple ways of involving law enforcement in prevention and harm reduction. Police and gendarmes also have help and rescue purpose, by assisting and bringing relief to drug users. For example, naloxone should meet the emergency criteria for possible interventions. The knowledge by the police and gendarmes of the relevant CSAPA and CAARUD sectors, in order to guide drug users towards preventive action, would ideally and swiftly replace police custody or criminal fines.
• Law enforcement members of PCP consider that their commitment to the public service and the exercise of their free will are not incompatible. Accordingly, they undertake to refrain from initiating proceedings against drug users, to give them advice or warnings, and where necessary, to provide them with the address and contact details of the adequate and easily accessible care centers.
• Inseparable from narcotics use repression, the PCP will spread about the absurdity of the statistical objectives policy which cripples law enforcement, its image, its credibility, and deteriorates its relationship with the communities where more than elsewhere, appeasement and dialogue are urgently needed.
In this respect, Article L.3421-1 of the Public Health Code can not longer be used as a pretext or a social control tool.
PCP will therefore bring into the debate the voice of officials currently on duty and held by secrecy and discretion obligations, and pass on their testimony.
• The collective believes that the statistical objectives management as well as accountability and performance bonuses afforded to department heads also represent a toxic system with respect to the very enforcement of public safety, which would deserve a parliamentary inquiry.
• Relying on its experience in the fieldwork as regards drug policies, PCP will advocate approaches and initiatives to restore the relationship between law enforcement and communities.
• PCP will in particular reconsider and make proposals regarding the sensitive issue of identity checks, its meaning, objectives, and modalities. Drug users repression is the favorite pretext, and highlights the strong discrimination linked to it.
PCP promotes and asks for use of ethnic datas.
• The collective will pay particular attention to reliability and technical evolution of detection tests used in the context of roadside checks. It is indeed ethically questionable to punish a driver based on a positive test, well beyond the effective time of an active ingredient, especially THC.
• Political action has failed for nearly 50 years. Police Contre la Prohibition collective believes that waste of public money and law enforcement and justice working time devoted to repression and punishment must be brought to an end, and that broader approach to harm reduction must now be a priority for the public service.
In this respect, another imperative is to free the criminal justice system from what should not be considered offenses, for it to allocate its resources to investigating, judging, and punishing real crimes.
• As a representative of police and gendarmerie officials who have been thinking about drug policies, have witnessed professional practices and behaviors associated with drug use repression, and therefore have proposals to make, PCP will seek to be heard and auditioned in the framework of parliamentary committees dealing with these issues.
• The PCP collective is not affiliated with any political or ideological structure. It's independent, autonomous, and will remain so.
PCP will be able to contribute to or participate in any initiative, and will willingly lend its assistance and specific expertise in the form of partnerships, with any collective, association or organization pursuing the same objective: reforming of public policies on drugs.
PCP's founders :
Bénédicte Desforges
Former police lieutenant. Served in an anti-crime service in the Paris suburbs, then in Paris 18th district. Authored two storybooks on cops, a blog and articles advocating the decriminalization of drug use. Adressed an open letter to Parliament members in june 2018 on the debate on the bill introducing a new sort of criminal fine punishing narcotics use.
( blog )
Thierry Tintoni
Police captain retired since 2017. Founder of the Sud-Intérieur union. Served in a district police station in Paris, as a judicial police officer, in the french internal security police, and with the public order services in Paris. His trade union activity led him to criticize new public management and statistical objectives policy, relying in particular on drug use repression. Former member of the Justice commitee of EELV (european green party)
Jean-Luc Garcia
Former gendarme and anti-prohibitionist activist. He took a public stand in open letters to two presidents of the french Republic : François Hollande advocating the cannabis legalization, and then Emmanuel Macron in march 2018 adding to his arguments a critical review on the impending tort fine for drugs use.
PCP's manifesto
