Knowledge and Policies to Reduce Drug Supply in France: Some Misunderstandings

Drug law enforcement enjoys an aura of prestige in French policing circles. For several decades, generations of civil servants and others employed in specialized law enforcement units have implemented their share of drug policy without always fully controlling the effects of their intervention and much less its causes. Drug supply reduction by law enforcement has gained a margin of autonomy and tends to grow in scope. In France, as in much of the rest of the world, seizure and arrest statistics play a key role in the “ceremony of drug control” (Manning 2004), now a central component of official discourse about crime and security.