What path should we take to put an end to drug trafficking? Defending the results of the “XXL net square” operations, which aim to deal a blow to drug trafficking in France, the Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti tackled the Canadian example, a country which has legalized the consumption of cannabis since 2018 for personal use.
“We see that there is, since the law [sur la légalisation] was voted on, two million more consumers,” launched the Minister of Justice on Wednesday at the end of the Council of Ministers, in a statement spotted by the Huffington Post. His statement can be found at the fifteenth minute here. Eric Dupond-Moretti also argued that crime had evolved since the application of the law. “The high end of the crime spectrum continues to traffic,” he said, explaining that he relies on data from Statistics Canada. 20 minutes went to delve into Canadian sources.
FAKE OFF
Like Eric Dupond-Moretti, a group of Health Canada experts responsible for assessing the impact of the law is concerned, in a report report in March, of the persistence of “activities linked to organized crime and criminal networks (which often include the trafficking of other substances and firearms, the use of firearms and the use of products cannabis to finance other serious criminal activities). However, this report does not provide data to assess the scale of this activity.
These experts also note that the nature of cannabis-related offenses has evolved: the number of “cannabis possession charges” decreased by “95%” between 2017 and 2022.
“Reduce the burden on the courts”
A trend already highlighted by Statistics Canada in 2023: before the 2018 law, the majority of offenses concerned possession of this drug, calculated the organism. Four years after the law came into force, offenses linked to possession only represented 12% of offenses linked to this narcotic. The majority – 67% – now concerns facts relating to the import and export of this product.
However, what Eric Dupond-Moretti does not say is that the total number of offenses linked to this product has decreased drastically in Canada: there were five times fewer in 2022 than in 2016. The Ministry of Justice of country note also that the law had the effect of “reducing the burden on the courts,” by keeping consumers out of courtrooms.
What about consumers? Are there more of them since the law was passed, as Eric Dupond-Moretti has argued? It all depends on their age: more people over 25 were consuming in 2021 than in 2018. Among the youngest, the observation is the opposite: among those aged 18-24, consumption stagnates, while it decreases among those aged 15-17.
The law authorizes consumption from the age of 18 and one of the objectives of this text was to “keep cannabis out of the reach of young people”, recalls the Canadian Department of Justice.