Legal cannabis production in New York State, United States, April 24, 2021 (Illustration) – AFP
- In an interview published in Sunday Newspaper (JDD) on April 25, the Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin affirmed that cannabis had “become a hard drug”.
- A term that has no scientific or medical value, for the experts contacted by 20 minutes.
- If the level of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol, one of the active substances of cannabis) has increased in recent years in the resin that circulates illegally in France, cannabis remains far less dangerous and harmful than many legal or illegal drugs, like alcohol, tobacco, cocaine or heroin, point out specialists.
That it seems far, the time when Emmanuel Macron said he was open to a legalization of cannabis. It was in 2016, when the President of the Republic was still only a candidate and he considered the measure useful “to fight against delinquency in difficult neighborhoods”.
The head of state now closes the door to a possible legalization, and hardens the tone in terms of repression. “Unlike those who advocate generalized decriminalization, I think that narcotics need a break, not a publicity stunt,” he said on April 18 in an interview with
Figaro, sweeping aside the tracks of the information mission on the regulation and impact of cannabis use, whose final report is expected in May at the National Assembly.
This new position of the President of the Republic, Gérald Darmanin has held it for a long time. “To legalize would be cowardice,” said the Minister of the Interior, openly opposed to recreational cannabis and a fervent supporter of a crackdown that is not bearing fruit. In the
JDD, Sunday, the first cop of France thus announced that the government was going to fight against the “soft power of the prolegalizations” on Internet, and affirmed that “the cannabis has become a hard drug”. “Everyone knows that the level of THC (the molecule responsible for the psychotropic effects of cannabis) has increased considerably. [au cours des dernières années] », Adds Gérald Darmanin.
This comparison is not, however, the most legitimate.
FAKE OFF
“Talking about hard drugs or soft drugs is neither medical nor scientific. It is an abuse of language ”, explains to 20 minutes Nicolas Authier, psychiatrist and pharmacologist at Clermont-Ferrand University Hospital, for whom these terms refer to pro or anti-legalization activism of cannabis. “It is only the use we make of a drug that is hard or soft. What matters is the dosage, the routes of administration and the effects on the individual, ”says Professor Laurent Karila, psychiatrist and addictologist at the Paul-Brousse hospital in Villejuif.
Questioned by 20 Minutes, the entourage of the Minister of the Interior simply indicates that Gerald Darmanin last supports his remarks “on the evolution in THC” of cannabis. A note from the anti-drug trafficking services made public by The Parisian in 2019 explains that the THC content of cannabis resin is now 26.5%, when this rate was 11% eight years ago. Information corroborated by
the French Observatory for Drugs and Drug Addiction, which nevertheless indicates that this increase affects “the herb to a lesser extent”, with a THC level of 12%.
Stronger, but not necessarily more dangerous
“Stronger cannabis is potentially more addictive and more harmful, mainly in young people,” indicates Bernard Basset, addictologist and president of Addictions France. But it’s a fact: it is still less dangerous than substances like alcohol, tobacco or cocaine. “Two scientific studies refer to addictology, he explains. The first is that of Bernard Roques, delivered in the form of a “report on the dangerousness of drugs” to Bernard Kouchner, then Minister of Health, in 1998.
To measure the dangerousness of substances, Roques uses several factors: physical dependence, psychological dependence, neurotoxicity, general toxicity and social dangerousness. This report is original for two reasons. First, because it includes tobacco and alcohol. Then because once hierarchical, it ranks them at the top of the podium behind heroin, and far ahead of cannabis, which has only weak and very weak effects for all these factors.
“It is time to listen to the scientists”
The second baseline study was piloted through
David nutt, in two articles published in the scientific journal The Lancet in 2007 and 2010. Nutt and his colleagues propose to assess the dangerousness of substances, taking into account the dangerousness for consumers and for society in order to obtain for each one an overall dangerousness score. The first three places are held by alcohol (with a score of 72 out of 100), heroin (55/100) and crack (54/100). Tobacco comes in 6th position (26/100) ahead of cannabis, which is in 8th place (20/100). “Even if cannabis would have become more dangerous today, it would still remain far behind these substances and would not make these two studies obsolete”, indicates Professor Laurent Karila.
If President Emmanuel Macron announced the holding of a “great national debate on drug consumption and its deleterious effects” in his interview with Figaro, the specialists are not fooled and denounce a more political than scientific position of the government in relation to cannabis.
“This kind of electoral declarations, like that of Gerald Darmanin, provide no answer to the public health problem posed by the consumption of cannabis in France,” said Professor Nicolas Authier. It is time to listen to scientists, read their studies, and have a real debate that is not corrupted by political postures. “