The deadly settling of scores between rival criminal groups is receiving significant media attention this spring of 2026. But drug trafficking is not limited to this. It also quietly destroys social bonds within working-class neighborhoods. Too often overlooked by left-wing organizations, this " social phenomenon " is a major obstacle to the fight for social justice. ---- In an article published on May 15, 2026, the newspaper Le Monde wrote: " Once again, drug-related violence is being transformed into a political issue, with its assigned roles and predictable pronouncements ." This is indeed what we are witnessing today, and we are willing to bet that no profound political transformation will emerge from this political maneuvering that will allow us to curb drug trafficking.
Violent deaths linked to drug trafficking appear to have exploded in recent years. The city of Marseille, where 39 people were murdered in 2023, received significant media attention. However, in its 2026 report, the judicial police intelligence service indicates that this phenomenon now affects " the entire country, against a backdrop of drug trafficking (small and medium-sized towns, beyond the traditional major urban centers), accompanied by a resurgence of violence (murders and attempted murders, kidnappings, hostage-takings, acts of intimidation: shootings, arson, extortion, etc.) ."
Although a decrease appears to have occurred in 2024, according to the Ministry of the Interior, with " only " 367 murders and attempted murders linked to drug trafficking, compared to 418 in 2023, there is no indication that this could stop quickly.
In working-class neighborhoods, these deaths traumatize the population. This is obviously only the tip of the iceberg. The daily intimidation in apartment building lobbies, and sometimes the violence suffered by residents, young people, and children, translate into a pervasive anxiety. And when shootings erupt, panic takes hold in the face of these daytime intrusions by masked men armed with assault rifles.
Recent assassinations have prompted presidential candidates, as well as the Minister of the Interior, to flex their muscles to demonstrate their commitment to the fight against drug trafficking. Thus, in an interview with Le Parisien published on Thursday, May 21, Édouard Philippe announced a plan to combat drug trafficking, which includes the declaration of a state of emergency. " We must draw inspiration from the fight against terrorism for the fight against drug trafficking, " he stated.
Similarly, on March 4, 2025, Bruno Retailleau, testifying before the National Assembly's Law Commission, asserted that " the time has come to regain control ." He proposed creating a specialized prosecutor's office that would focus on the " high end " of the drug trade. To this end, he advocated the use of " algorithmic intelligence " (the massive analysis of data transmitted over the internet), access to encrypted messaging services such as Signal or WhatsApp, facial recognition, and other tools. As for the escape of Mohamed Amra, during which two prison guards were murdered, it inspired him to propose a new, ultra-high-security prison regime.
Beyond these " announcements ," how can we understand the ineffectiveness of state repression in overcoming organized crime?
The economic impact of drug trafficking
This is not intended to be a global overview of the drug market. We will focus here on the situation in France, based on official French government estimates. However, it is important to place this assessment within the context of the evolution of psychotropic substance production. Production in Latin America, in particular, has a significant impact on the French market.
Latin American cocaine production has doubled in just four years, reaching 4,000 tons in 2024. All this merchandise has to be sold somehow. Like good capitalists, drug traffickers have sought out diversifying markets and have primarily directed their products toward Europe.
Thus, in 2023, cocaine became the product whose sales generated the most revenue in France: EUR3.1 billion. Cannabis, on the other hand, only brought in EUR2.7 billion. To provide a more complete picture of the market, we can refer to the estimates of the French Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (OFDT), which put the total revenue from illicit drugs at EUR6.8 billion in 2023.
Cannabis and cocaine alone generate approximately 90% of total revenue. However, the French Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction ( OFDT) notes strong growth in the value of the psychostimulant market: +637% for ecstasy and +470% for amphetamines since 2010. These increases are remarkable, especially considering that the overall market has simply tripled over the same period.
These developments must be considered within the European context. Lorraine Nolan, director of the European Union Agency for Drugs and Drug Addiction, stated during the presentation of the 2026 report that " drug markets are evolving at a breakneck pace, and the diversity of substances on European streets is becoming increasingly unpredictable ." " Users can take very powerful drugs, often without realizing it ." As a result, 50 new psychoactive substances were reported in Europe in 2025.
These substances " present an increased risk of potentially fatal poisoning ." Fentanyl, which has become a veritable mass killer in the United States, with 76,000 deaths in 2022, was responsible for more than 100 deaths in Bulgaria between 2024 and 2025.
The roots of the ineffectiveness of the fight against drug trafficking
Drug trafficking didn't develop overnight. By accumulating capital, drug cartels acquire increasing resources, both to develop new markets and to exert influence on societies in a way that benefits their business. It is in light of this expansion of drug trafficking that we can understand what is happening today in so many working-class neighborhoods. Because that is precisely where it's happening, since, of course, the police don't allow drug dealing hotspots to flourish in affluent areas.
To answer our question, we will draw on an interview with Bertrand Monnet, a professor specializing in " Criminal Risk Management " at HEC Montréal (École des hautes études commerciales), published on May 17, 2026, by the newspaper Le Monde . He first points out the gaps in police and judicial pressure on drug trafficking. This pressure focuses primarily on two aspects of this criminal industry: the transport and sale of drugs. Money laundering-which allows for the transformation of large amounts of cash into bank accounts usable in the legitimate economy-largely escapes public prosecution.
Furthermore, it's important to remember the disproportion between the stakes and the resources available to law enforcement agencies to tackle, for example, drug trafficking. Take the port of Dunkirk, for instance, where 350 customs officers are supposed to inspect 3 million containers a year. This seems more like a show of force than a genuine commitment to addressing the transportation aspect of drug trafficking.
In such a context, repression resembles a Danaid's barrel, with police successes being taken into account by drug barons in the vagaries of trafficking, and transport networks and dealing points are perpetually reconfigured.
Ultimately, failing to truly address money laundering allows drug cartels to continue accumulating billions, expanding their financial resources, and strengthening their grip on contemporary societies. To understand why law enforcement policies are so ineffective against this link in the criminal chain, it's essential to first explain, in simple terms, how money laundering works.
Bertrand Monnet, in a very clear and instructive way, divides money laundering into three stages. He calls the first stage "placement." Dealers are paid in banknotes, which must then be deposited into bank accounts. Today, it is no longer possible to deposit money collected at drug dealing spots directly into a bank without being able to prove its origin.
It's necessary to use untraceable intermediaries. It's possible to buy goods by paying in cash and then resell them by receiving a bank transfer. Alternatively, there's the option of using cryptocurrencies. Or it's easy to mix drug money with the receipts of businesses, supermarkets, and restaurants, for example, which legitimately accept cash payments. Or you can use international money transfer services that allow you to be paid in cash initially and receive the money in a bank account. In short, it's about dividing these massive flows into small, untraceable sums.
The second stage is layering. This involves the flow of money between companies, all of which belong to the traffickers. Mexican drug cartels, for example, own hotel chains. These companies obviously have suppliers to pay. These chains are most often subsidiaries of a holding company. At the end of the year, each hotel transfers its earnings to the holding company, which is very often domiciled in a tax haven, thus making the money flows untraceable, given the banking secrecy laws of Dubai, Hong Kong, Panama, and so on.
Finally comes the integration stage, meaning investment in the legal economy. Drug traffickers often favor sectors that allow them to launder their dirty money, such as the hotels and supermarkets already mentioned, but also import-export and logistics companies-all tools for facilitating drug trafficking. And there are always construction companies, which are very useful for organizing the corruption of politicians responsible for awarding public contracts.
Why are the policies implemented so ineffective?
The first obvious point is that drug money laundering, among its most fundamental mechanisms, uses the same channels that allow multinational corporations to siphon off the added value produced in their subsidiaries and then evade taxes in the countries where these companies are located. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that Western states will tackle these mechanisms that enable drug money laundering.
On the contrary, under the onslaught of neoliberalism, we are witnessing a deregulation of financial governance, cryptocurrencies, in short, everything that can generate financial profits, to the great benefit of drug trafficking. This convergence between the criminal industry and the financialization of multinationals reveals a shared ideology: anything that allows for the accumulation of profits must be used.
Drug traffickers are, in reality, capitalists-just a slightly different kind-whose interests converge with those of supposedly more law-abiding capitalists. The latter, too, never hesitate to employ a range of illegal activities, particularly through corruption, tax evasion schemes, and even the use of front companies to target their opponents.
Donald Trump, the President of the United States, in full view of the world, is using imperial power to serve his personal interests and those of his clan. He scoffs at all legality and is prepared to use unrestrained violence to achieve this. He claims to be ready to destroy an entire country. He offers unwavering support to the genocidal government of Israel. One is entitled to ask what distinguishes his logic from that of the drug cartels. They are simply competing criminal groups.
Furthermore, the line between drug traffickers and " legal " capitalists is becoming increasingly blurred as the former's grip on the legal economy intensifies. At a press conference in Marseille on March 14, 2026, Colonel Olivier Leblanc reiterated " the considerable profits generated by drug trafficking, which allow this organization[the DZ Mafia]to become ever stronger and more powerful ." The public prosecutor, for his part, specified that these profits, estimated at three hundred thousand euros each month for each DZ Mafia executive, were " not squandered, but laundered and reinvested ." Today, the firepower acquired by the drug cartels allows them to gradually infect the legal economy.
We will obviously not find statistics that allow us to measure the penetration of mafia interests into the legal economy, and it is not a matter of claiming that the majority of the latter is under their control. But undeniably, the economic power of drug cartels is growing, making it all the more difficult to implement a policy that is truly unfavorable to drug trafficking. In light of these facts, the ineffectiveness of drug trafficking repression takes on a new meaning.
What to do?
Obviously, we, like the social movement as a whole, don't have the means to fight drug trafficking directly. We remember the short-lived " Italian Anarchist Party, " which in the 1980s aimed to combat the Mafia's influence on Italian society by establishing a presence in working-class neighborhoods. It disappeared after suffering deaths within its ranks. Nor will we forget the brother of community and environmental activist Amine Kessaci, active in Marseille, particularly in the fight against drug-related violence, who was murdered by the DZ Mafia on November 13, 2025. Fighting the Mafia head-on is beyond our capabilities. However, that doesn't mean everything is impossible.
Legalizing cannabis could help dry up some of the revenue generated by drug trafficking. However, the criminal industry's ability to innovate with new substances would still allow it to rebound. Demands for legalization alone will never be enough to comprehensively address this social cancer. In addition, combating all forms of corruption linked to drug trafficking, which falls under the purview of anti-corruption organizations, could effectively weaken drug trafficking.
But the social movement must first and foremost provide solutions for the residents of working-class neighborhoods who directly suffer the social scourge caused by drug trafficking in their daily lives. To achieve this, a genuine commitment must first be fostered to build real human connections between activists and the residents of these neighborhoods. This can only be done based on the needs and aspirations of these communities. The task is immense. That is precisely why we must begin working on it now. We can hope that this will encourage the organization of true solidarity within working-class neighborhoods, which, in conjunction with activist support, will become capable of opposing the presence of drug trafficking in these communities.
Added to this is a political imperative in these troubled times marked by social despair and its corollary, the rise of racism and the far right. It is no coincidence that the areas where economically marginalized populations are relegated are also the places where drug sales are primarily organized and where the foot soldiers of the drug trade are recruited.
It is also no coincidence that these enclaves of poverty, even destitution, are home to many people of immigrant origin. Failing to tackle drug trafficking allows the material conditions conducive to the racist hatred upon which fascism builds its power to flourish.
https://plateformecl.org/narcotrafic-la-pourriture-du-capitalisme/
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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