Drug trafficking: the mayor of Nantes advocates the establishment of a "national and European plan"

Le Figaro Nantes

Last May, the city of Nantes turned into the "Wild West" according to the acerbic comments of some residents tired of seeing the multiplication of gunshots in priority neighborhoods of the city that left one dead and three seriously injured. Questioned Friday by Le Figaro on this resurgence, Johanna Rolland, the PS mayor of the city who says she is "committed daily" with her teams to this problem, called for a "collective mobilization" against drug trafficking that "gangrene the country" and is now found even "in medium-sized cities".

A speech that the president of France urbaine, association bringing together French metropolises, recalled Monday on the set of the television show "C ce soir" on France 5 during a debate devoted to the illegal trade in drugs. Calling not to stigmatize the "neighborhoods" on the subject, she first described "a spiral of violence that is absolutely infernal and puts families in a situation of total disarray". According to Johanna Rolland, this scourge also impacts the work of mayors who find themselves "on the front line" and continue to "sound the alarm".

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Not so new proposals

"I don't go a week without seeing one of my colleagues tell me that one of his main concerns is drug trafficking," she says. Faced with the observation of an "extremely dangerous situation", the one who is also first deputy national secretary of the PS advocates the "establishment of a national and European plan" which must focus in particular on "financial gains, their profitability and traceability". On this point, she advocated the "seizure of criminal assets". Not really a novelty since it already exists as pointed out to him by a specialist of the subject present on set.

The mayor of Nantes has also positioned herself in favor of the "creation of an intelligence service dedicated to the dismantling of drug trafficking" to make this fight a "priority" because the "judicial police is already very mobilized". Again, on social networks, some pointed out to him that this task was already the responsibility of the Anti-Narcotics Office (OFAST) set up on January 1, 2020. An organization that the mayor seems to know, however, for having "welcomed its creation" during the exchanges on set by having qualified it as a "necessary first step".

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Prevention, education and firmness

Lambasting the proposal of Eric Ciotti, the boss of the LR, who had proposed on the set of BFMTV to "display the name of those who are arrested in possession of narcotics" - which would add "hysteria to hysteria" - the mayor of Nantes asked to "not blame the citizens" for a problem that stems above all from the intervention of the "public authorities". She defended the fact of not "choosing between prevention, education and firmness" and the "need to mobilize all levers" citing in particular the role of child protection services and the detection of "mental pathologies among pre-adolescents" in the face of "drug trafficking that exploits human distress".

Asked about the settling of scores in her city, Johanna Rolland said "refuse the discourse of fate". For the edile, the situation would result above all from "a market logic" of traffickers - "business is business" in his words - who would have come to "occupy" a territory "relatively spared" before. A phenomenon that for the elected is not specific to Nantes but is also found in cities such as Rennes or Angers.