Jacques Garello is professor emeritus at Aix-Marseille University, president of ALEPS and past international director of the Lions Club.
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This means that the way we fight against drugs, in France and in most countries, has no chance of being effective because we seek the solution on the supply side, that is - say traffickers, instead of looking at the demand side, that is to say drug addicts.
Supply and demand: here we are in the classic logic of economic analysis.
In fact, the economy is the satisfaction of needs through exchange between individuals or groups.
The exchange can take place within a community, for example family or religious.
The exchange can take place on a market, and money then makes it possible to expand the circle of transactions.
In a market there is necessarily supply and demand, a supplier and a customer, a producer and a consumer.
Market prices reveal current shortages and surpluses; profits will result from the company's ability to correct imbalances through innovation.
You don't need to be an economics professor to see this evidence.
When it comes to drugs, action on supply is ineffective, for at least two reasons.
The first is that as soon as a trafficking network is destroyed, a space opens up on the market, and a competitor takes it.
The lessons of alcohol prohibition in the United States are clear: ever more consumption, always the black market, corruption even in the police, the justice system and elected officials.
The second reason is that drug supply has the potential to create its own demand;
traffickers manufacture their clients by creating addiction.
Drugged gently, for free, and sometimes with "soft" drugs, the victim will ultimately have to sell drugs to pay for the ones they need and will thus often escalate, overdose, moving towards ever more drugs. harder and more expensive.
Those who have the means will propel themselves more quickly to the top of the ladder.
Drugs then become a cultural problem.
It is characteristic of a society where the moral and spiritual environment is easy and fatal.
Jacques Garello
In contrast, we usually neglect the demand side, we do not ask the real question: why the need for drugs?
The question arises for older adolescents and adults, and increasingly for minors.
It is not, as those who politicize the problem want, a question of category or social situation.
There are always and everywhere personal reasons which are found in a disturbed life, in a life without interest and without hope.
A life disrupted by an accident, by poorly experienced tragedies, for which the help of family, loved ones and religion was not sufficient.
Previously, the unfortunate took refuge in alcohol or tobacco: easy to obtain, affordable, socially tolerated.
Now drugs are within everyone's reach;
advertising appeared, prices were displayed, and in any location.
Life can be without interest and without hope: the daily life of a routine job, without initiative, paid by seniority, the hours and transportation exhausting, the social elevator broken down.
Drugs then become a cultural problem.
It is characteristic of a society where the moral and spiritual environment is easy and fatal.
It is dramatic that drugs are now reaching minor children: not only are they victims, but they are increasingly actors.
This is where the priority efforts should go: at the level of education.
Because it also means taking evil at its roots, and freeing future generations.
I understand that we can re-educate adults by opening specialized centers, but in general it is a question of supporting drug addicts who have already been convicted, it is medical support that is administered to them.
Much more necessary and effective in the long term is prevention at the childhood level.
This is where the efforts should go: at the level of education.
Neurologists and psychologists are clear: we can educate young children to prevent them from becoming victims of any addiction, drugs such as tobacco or alcohol.
To do this, we must break mimicry, this tendency of children to do like the others, and to suffer the gang reflex - when it is necessary to imitate the leader -, and on the other hand teach them some moral values, teach them that there is a right and a wrong, that we must respect others.
There are programs based on these principles, available to trained teachers.
For example, I know the “Quest” program, broadcast in France since the 1970s by the Lions Club International.
But the teachers' unions obtained from the ministry the ban on the program, which will not be lifted until 2010. At the moment very similar programs, often called "Benevolent Communication" or "Non-Violent Communication" are multiplying in France , in private but also public establishments.
Around the world, more than 80 million students have learned to resist mimicry and escape bullying.
Youth drug use has been completely eradicated in Australia and South Korea.
The worst is that children play adults: juvenile crime is growing at a dizzying pace.
Jacques Garello
We can doubt the current interest of National Education in developing this approach.
The time is rather for ecology and politicization, children are formatted for egalitarianism, accustomed to harassment, we take drugs with glue.
The worst is that children play adults: juvenile crime is growing at a dizzying pace.
Under these conditions, declinologists have multiplied, and we now have a disparate mixture of completely destructive but quite tempting “carpe diem” and ecological apocalypse prophesying the destruction of the planet.
The accents of Marxism are still heard: we must destroy a system based on social injustice and the lure of profit.
Postmodern philosophers add another layer: man is fallen and society is necessarily in decomposition.
In this way, the education of children is now guided towards egalitarianism, collectivism and permissiveness - so that the youth is ready for all revolts, and therefore for drugs.
As for adults, drugs are revenge for lives without happiness, without love, and without God.
The duty of free men, while they are still free, is to spread the opposite message: let us have faith in human beings, let us reject the prophets of doom, let us tell the true story of the progress of humanity up to the present day , let us reform our institutions to restore the freedom, responsibility, property and dignity of people.