David Sénat is Advocate General at the Court of Appeal of Versailles.
Two recent court cases, very different in substance, have illustrated an evolution of French political society consisting in diverting the gaze from the real issues yet in question.
The first is that of Manslaughter aggravated by the consumption of cocaine and the state of legal recidivism of Pierre Palmade.
It gave rise, and unsurprisingly, to forceful reactions that were inappropriate and above all useless in view of the real issues that were evaded or concealed from them.
No one was fooled by the effects of political communication produced on this occasion without any relation to the reality of the legal instruments, nor of the standards illustrating our rule of law.
Evidenced by the announcement of a future administrative withdrawal of the twelve points of the driving license in case of manslaughter by driver under the influence of narcotics.
In defiance of a fragile balance between the missions of the administrative authority and that of the judicial judge.
Further evidence of this is the proposal to create a road homicide, a homicide of the third type, of which it is unclear whether it would be voluntary or involuntary.
Finally, the reactivation of a useless debate on the voluntary homicide of the unborn child illustrates this.
One of the functions of the society of the spectacle is to entertain us.
That is to say, to divert us from the real questions.
David Senate
Without ever mentioning the fact that the judge can, if not must, within the framework of the individualisation of penalties, aggravate repression when the human consequences are high and the circumstances deserve it, and such is indeed the case of the loss of a child that carries a wife.
The second case is the Dawes case, named after a cocaine importer, which has seen attention focused on the professional behavior of two of his lawyers, and a possible offense of complicity in attempted fraud in the judgment which they are charged with the transmission of false documents intended to deceive the judicial authority.
Justice will say what exactly is in particular from the point of view of the intentional element, the evidence of which does not appear in the first analysis.
Read alsoHow the cocaine tsunami sweeping through Europe is jeopardizing democracies
But important as these cases are, which arouse reactions as unanimous as they are excessive, they mask the essential.
One of the functions of the society of the spectacle is to entertain us.
That is to say, to divert us from the real questions.
To make us confuse the causes with the consequences.
The causes of the disorders that we comment on and deplore lie in the contemporary proliferation of cocaine trafficking and the massive consumption of cocaine in France in particular.
Including the power of drug traffickers and the pressures they exert on lawyers are also the name, at the very end of the criminal process.
A traffic with geopolitical dimensions that has not escaped anyone.
But which have not been the subject of any recent initiative at international or European level, whereas most of the major ports on the continent, Le Havre, Antwerp, Marseille are today particularly concerned.
Isolated initiatives, such as the one recently taken by the Belgian government to appoint a national drug commissioner, are a cruel admission of powerlessness.
Everywhere, the refusal to enter into conflict with the corporation of dockers and certain port managers and the invocation of fatality are equally so.
Beyond the financial dams that have given way, we must above all question the moral barriers that have collapsed a long time ago.
David Senate
Too often public action comes down to lamenting the phenomenon or static self-satisfaction with the quantities seized, without any dynamic vision that would see the networks attacked upstream.
In fact, the public discourse on cocaine has for many years been dominated by emptiness, and also a certain form of complacency.
Cocaine, this drug formerly presented as being that of the elite, of festive occurrences, of so-called high-level professions especially subject to stress, has today become that of the multitude, thanks to an ever more abundant supply and prices which have collapsed as a result.
Beyond the financial dams that have given way, we must above all question the moral barriers that have collapsed a long time ago by dissolving into a liberal and permissive discourse of which the elites of this country or some of them have been promoters and short-term beneficiaries.
In the medium and long term, in fact, we must indeed observe that
Read alsoHugues Lagrange: “The trivialization of hard drugs, the great Western malaise”
It is high time that drug trafficking, and in particular cocaine trafficking, finally became the subject of initiatives taken at European or international level.
Without the States being in any respect divested.
We are indeed still waiting for strong, proactive penal policies which effectively tackle trafficking and which must be judged as the crimes that they also most often are.
Thanks to the investigations of a judicial police more than ever necessary.
Subject to courts of assizes, admittedly made up solely of professional judges, but which in the name of society must continue to say what cocaine trafficking is the name of, ensuring a just repression which would finally make French territory unattractive for traffickers.