(Marijuananews note: When Socialist Prime
Minister Jospin was running for office, he said that he would decriminalize marijuana. One
more betrayal without reason. This article gives a number of useful facts which the French
government is going to ignore -- again.)
See
More Details From
French Report Saying Alcohol Is Much More Dangerous Than Cannabis Reported By IoS
and
It Is To French
President Chirac That We Should Be Grateful For The UN Summit Disaster Getting Global
Attention
and links
January 7, 1999
From Reuters
http://www.lemonde.fr/FRENCH GOVT URGED TO RETHINK
DRUGS POLICY
PARIS, Jan 7 (Reuters) - France should take a more pragmatic
approach to fighting drug abuse and take into account the fact that alcohol and tobacco
kill far more people than heroin or cocaine, an inter-ministerial committee has told the
government.
Prime Minister Lionel Jospin’s office said on Thursday the committee’s
recommendations, yet to be approved by the cabinet, were based on a policy of
"prevention, repression and treatment".
Le Monde newspaper, which published extracts from the report on Thursday, said the
committee urged the government to adopt a policy "which takes into account all types
of addictive behaviour, regardless of the legal status of the product".
The paper said around 60,000 deaths were caused each year by smoking while around
20,000 people died from diseases linked to alcohol. By comparison, 228 people died from
heroin overdoses in 1997, it said.
(Marijuananews note: How many people died of marijuana overdoses?)
The paper said the interministerial committee, which has helped draw up anti-drugs
programmes for successive governments since 1982, argued in favour of concentrating police
action on tackling drug dealers rather than drug takers.
Some 70,000 people were arrested in France in 1997 for using
illegal drugs such as cannabis and heroin, while around 800 drug users were jailed for
this crime.
See
Comparison of drug addiction
levels in various European countries.
However, an official in Jospin’s office said the government was not about to
legalise so-called soft drugs such as cannabis.
"There is certainly no question of putting two million people in prison, but
neither is there any question of legalisation," the official said. An estimated
two million people in France smoke cannabis.
(Marijuananews note: France has a population of approximately 58 million.)
The committee chairperson, Nicole Maestracci, is due to meet the director of Jospin’s
office next week to discuss the government’s anti-drug programme.
(Marijuananews note: There were 2.4 drug-related deaths per
million inhabitants in the Netherlands in 1995. In France this figure was 9.5, in
Germany 20, in Sweden 23.5 and in Spain 27.1. According to the 1995 report of the European
Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction in Lisbon, the Dutch figures are the lowest
in Europe.)
Copyright: 1999 Reuters Limited.
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