Bike lanes vs narcos: French mayors step up fight against drug gangs
Growing problem sparks concern that far right could take advantage in local elections
Montpellier mayor Michaël Delafosse has come up with a novel way to combat narco-traffickers: tear down shops suspected of laundering drug money and replace them with a cycle lane.
On a drizzly December morning in the southern French city, excavators were demolishing a row of barber shops and 24-hour convenience stores to make way for a bike path.
“Ten of these were fronts for narco-laundering,” Delafosse said at the demolition site. The Socialist mayor said he had been forced to find a solution, even as the city spent months reclaiming sites and evicting owners.
The narco problem is growing across cities in France, from deadly gang feuds in the port city of Marseille to violence in smaller towns, where score-settling among dealers and traffickers was once unheard of. French officials are increasingly worried about growing trafficking networks, fuelled by soaring cocaine consumption.
The issue has surged to the fore ahead of local elections across the country in March, an electoral test before 2027’s presidential ballot. Opinion polls show that security issues are the largest concern for voters, ahead of housing and healthcare — a theme that traditionally has benefited conservative candidates and could be a driver for Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National.
The French government has defended its record. On the same morning in December, President Emmanuel Macron made the latest of several high-profile visits to Marseille to try to spearhead a drugs crackdown. His trip came weeks after the murder last year of 19-year-old Mehdi Kessaci, the brother of anti-gang violence activist Amine Kessaci, in a suspected act of intimidation that shocked the country.
Macron announced new fines of €500, up from €200, for anyone caught taking drugs nationwide, in what he called a “war” on traffickers. He has highlighted efforts to pour €5bn into Marseille since 2021 to try to transform the city through better transport and schools, but also with reinforced security and police.
The problems are far from confined to France. From Spain to Belgium, warnings over the power and wealth wielded by cartels are also picking up.
But French mayors have said they have insufficient resources to tackle the threat.
In Montpellier, a series of arson attacks on suspect convenience stores included a deadly one in November, in what police have investigated as a possible retaliation between gangs.
Along the coast from Marseille in Sète, known for its sandy beaches, police are concerned about warfare between dealers. Tranquil cities such as Nantes in western France and Clermont-Ferrand near Lyon have warned of a major pick-up in trafficking, while Grenoble and Nice have more entrenched problems of drug-related violence.
“There are no areas sheltered from this anymore,” said Ludovic Friat, who heads a magistrates’ union. Usage of drugs had become more widespread and been made more easily available, he said. “It used to be the case that you’d talk about the big cities, and the provinces were not affected.”
Delafosse said mayors had been forced to use “DIY” methods to combat gangs and called for a “much more powerful judicial arsenal”, despite an “anti-narcos” law passed in the French parliament last June. France set up a dedicated prosecutor’s office looking into drug-related offences and networks, which started working in January.
Delafosse said Montpellier’s city hall had spent €800,000 buying up 14 shops and pseudo-businesses, conceiving the bike lane plan and removing asbestos from the sites and other related work.
“It’s expensive for an environmental project,” Delafosse quipped. “On the other hand it means recovering some peace for thousands of inhabitants and making the local lycée attractive again. I’m doing what I can with the means the law has given me.”
He has hired unarmed private security agents to evict people convicted of drug offences from social housing and has called for mayors to have a veto on business openings.
The recently destroyed stores in a row of former garages were among dozens that have sprouted up across Montpellier and its palm tree-lined medieval town centre. A proliferation of barber shops suspected of laundering money are also attracting attention.
“They’re open all day Sunday without a soul,” said Yves Martinot, a local pensioner who called for more action. “There aren’t many hair-dos being done there.”
The French government says the new anti-drugs bill will allow it to temporarily close stores for six months on suspicion of laundering money, as it steps up tax inspections.
This might not shut them for ever but was an effective harassment tactic, said François-Xavier Lauch, the outgoing préfet, or state representative, named by Macron for the Hérault region around Montpellier.
“It’s a key answer to the problem, along with dislodging dealership points,” Lauch said. “One of the things that’s the most disruptive to citizens from narco-trafficking is seeing their town centres rotted by these types of businesses.”
Activists such as Kessaci and even police have warned that gangs simply return to dealership spots or store operations after a clearout.
In Marseille, drug trafficking is one of the issues that may help attract more voters to the far right. RN candidate Franck Allisio, who has called for a state of emergency to tackle the problem, is closely trailing the leftwing incumbent mayor Benoît Payan in polls.
In Montpellier, the RN is far behind other rivals in the city but very dominant in the surrounding region.
Delafosse, a former high school teacher, said he had also chosen to tackle the narco fallout so as not to allow the far right to take advantage of the problem.
“I don’t want to leave these issues to be instrumentalised by populists,” Delafosse said. “We need to show people that we have answers.”