Nîmes Magistrate Calls Drug War ’Lost Cause’, Urges Radical Overhaul

"It’s a lost cause". "A lost cause?" "Yes, it’s completely a lost cause in the current state," says an anonymous Nîmes magistrate questioned by Midi Libre about the fight against drug trafficking. Are these statements justified? For nearly 14 years, Nîmes has become a hub for drug trafficking with redistribution of drugs to the Paris region, Grenoble, Lyon, and sometimes even Belgium and Corsica (for other products than cannabis resin). An essential platform, in particular, for the rise of go-fast or slow imports (drugs hidden in trucks) of the drug trade, especially for cannabis resin from Morocco and transiting through Spain, says the same source.

The fight against drug trafficking has certainly seen some success since 2012, but the phenomenon has escalated since 2019: gang wars, settling of scores, multiplication of drug dealing points... There have been some arrests. Some traffickers have even been convicted. But there is still a long way to go. So far, the phenomenon has continued to increase. The Nîmes magistrate does not just make an observation, but also proposes several avenues of reflection to stem the phenomenon. "Dozens of investigators need to be put in the Gard, or even hundreds of investigators in the region, and very significant technical resources, particularly on telephony and data extraction," he recommended.

He adds: "Then, the volume of the procedure to extract this data needs to be considerably reduced, as it requires dozens of pages of procedure, it needs to be simplified as much as possible and its heaviness reduced."