A group of 80 MPs in France have had a negative response against recent political arguments for the legalisation of cannabis, arguing that there is no such thing as a “soft drug”.
In an open letter published in the newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche this past weekend, the MPs wrote: “There is no ‘soft drug’. Drugs are a poison, a plague that we must fight.”
The letter reads: “In recent weeks, some mayors have restarted the debate by saying they are ‘for’ the legalisation of cannabis. We, MPs and Républicains senators, would like to remind them that we are strongly against this.”
The MPs include Bruno Retailleau, leader of the LR party in the Senate; Eric Ciotti, MP in Alpes-Maritimes; Gérard Longuet, senator of Meuse; and Philippe Bas, senator in Manche.
They continue to argue in the letter that “Legalising the sale of cannabis will make current dealers turn towards other, even more dangerous substances. Just because law enforcement struggles to keep up with dealers, doesn’t mean that we should legalize the practice.”
“If we did that, we would also need to legalise arms dealers, fiscal fraud, prostitution, and no longer punish excessive speed on the roads! We see in our constituencies, parents who are overwhelmed by seeing their child addicted, their families destroyed, friendships disappearing because of drugs. People lose their jobs and young people fall into delinquency to get cannabis.”
The MPS added, “Even if cannabis is theoretically banned to minors, we know that children who see their parents consume drugs are more likely to be themselves consumers, as we already see with tobacco.”
The MPs see cannabis and other drugs as the cause of “psychosis, schizophrenia, depression, school failure, dropping out of school, dropping out of society”. The letter ended with, “We share the words of the Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin: ‘Drugs are sh*t’.”
Darmanin had said in September, “[I cannot say] as interior minister, as a politician, to parents who are fighting for their children to escape addiction to this drug, that we are going to legalise this sh*t.”
