Name: Frances Macron vows to fight drug trafficking
Uploaded: 2025-12-17T10:44:43.441Z
Duration: 2 min 1 s
Description: The French president is visiting Marseille one month after the murder of the brother of a young anti-drugs activist, as the government steps up efforts to tackle the city’s drug-related crime. On Tuesday, Emmanuel Macron announced tougher penalties for drug users and vowed to pursue the leaders of trafficking networks, including those operating from abroad.

The French president is visiting Marseille one month after the murder of the brother of a young anti-drugs activist, as the government steps up efforts to tackle the city’s drug-related crime. On Tuesday, Emmanuel Macron announced tougher penalties for drug users and vowed to pursue the leaders of trafficking networks, including those operating from abroad.

Marseille

French President Emmanuel Macron has announced new measures to combat drug trafficking in Marseille, including raising fixed penalty fines for drug users to 500 euros and intensifying efforts to target network leaders abroad. These steps follow the murder of Médic Assasi, which brought renewed attention to drug-related crime in the city. 

While Macron emphasized the need to penalize drug users and pursue traffickers internationally, some experts criticized the approach as superficial, arguing that deeper social and inclusion policies are necessary to address the root causes of drug crime. Observers also noted that recent declines in drug-related violence are due more to the dominance of a single gang than to government action.

France's Macron vows to fight drug trafficking

A brand new police station for Marseille's impoverished northern districts, where drug dealing is rampant. The issue is back at the top of Emmanuel Macron's political agenda, after the murder of young Médic Assasi, the brother of Amine, an anti-drug activist that shocked the country last month. The French president on Tuesday pledged to clamp down on drug users, increasing fixed penalty fines to 500 euros. 500 euros because we need to hit the wallets of those caught with drugs, because doing drugs isn't fun. Anyone who uses drugs needs to realise that they are fuelling the drug trade that is destroying our cities and neighbourhoods. He also announced that France was widening the hunt for drug traffickers. The Minister of Justice and the National Director of the Judicial Police have made several diplomatic visits, as will I in the coming days, to seek cooperation from the countries where the network leaders are based, so that we can seize their assets and arrest the leaders. That's the key to all of this. These are headline-grabbing approaches that don't tackle the root causes of the problem, according to this sociologist. She says France's policies are the main reason Marseille has become a drugs hub. It would be very easy to say that the problem lies elsewhere. The problem is inside the countries that, unfortunately for a number of reasons, have marginalised certain groups, especially groups of migrants or sons and daughters of migrants. So you can raise the fines, of course, you can raise the penalties, but if you don't accompany that with a very hard look at the cultural policies of inclusion, it's not going anywhere. Although the number of people killed in drug-related violence in Marseille has been falling for two years, observers say it's less due to the work of the authorities than to the dominance of the DZ mafia gang, which has led to less violence between rival groups in the city.

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