Drug trafficking: a report warns of violence being erected as a "counter-culture" in a France where the drug supply is now "without a dead zone"

"A white tsunami." In his foreword to the 2025 report entitled "State of the threat linked to drug trafficking," drawn up by the Anti-Narcotics Office (Ofast), a document with restricted distribution, published at the end of July, which Le Monde was able to consult, the Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, uses the metaphor of a tidal wave that has become an "existential threat to our country," referring to cocaine and ecstasy.

Reading this sixty-two page, dense and abundantly documented, offers a 360 degree panorama of a multitude of traffics, which no longer only pass through the oceans but take advantage of the exponential development of air routes or use the major road corridors of the Balkans or Central Asia, to flood France, "suddenly become one of the most affected European countries" .

One observation is immediately clear: that of an increase in cocaine consumption, supported by the abundance of production and the permanence of demand. Because, to supply 3.7 million experimenters (adults who have tried cocaine at least once) and 1.1 million users (adults who have consumed it at least once in the year), according to figures from the French Office for Drugs and Addictive Trends (OFDT), in 2023, drug traffickers know they can count on the productivity of South American cartels.

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