Its market for the first time surpassed that of cannabis in , with the former reaching 3.1 billion euros a year and the latter 2.7 billion. According to the study “Size of markets in France (2010-2023)”, released on Monday by the French Observatory on Drugs and Addiction Trends (OFDT), the turnover of illegal substances has tripled since 2010.
When the study began, cannabis was first in turnover, but it has now been dethroned by cocaine, which “continues to spread in France since 2010, suggesting that the dynamics of this market began before 2010”. To explain the increase in cocaine, he states that “traffickers turned to Europe after the saturation of the American market followed by demand attracted by quality, good prices and improved sales methods.”
Numerically, the OFDT estimates that in France, there are five times more cannabis smokers than cocaine users, but they are increasing.
The “white tsunami”, as it is called, arrives at the ports of the North Sea or Spain and from there goes to the biggest traffic hubs or secondary ports. The availability of cocaine continues to fuel the market and the profile of users has changed. Instead of “the citizens of the city centers, who often finance the drug dealers,” as French government spokeswoman Mont Breton recently said, echoing the words of President Emmanuel Macron, drug users are now, in fact, the Mr. and Mrs. next door.
Another Homeland Security Statistics report, released Dec. 3, found that “the number of those prosecuted for trafficking cocaine or ecstasy is growing much faster than those prosecuted for trafficking cannabis or heroin.” The number of people prosecuted for trafficking cannabis increased by an average of 4% per year from 2016 to 2024, compared to an annual increase of 10% for ecstasy and 14% for cocaine. The average age of cocaine users is 31 years, while cannabis users are 24 years old on average.
Nicolas Preece, president of the Interministerial Mission to Combat Drugs and Addictive Behaviors (Mildeca), said in an interview with Monde that “in the last 12 years, emergency room admissions have tripled due to cocaine. Except that these are not cases of addiction, but of myocardial infarction, for example. Not to forget the resulting psychological or psychiatric disorders. So we have to be very careful, we send the message that drug use makes everything worse. It creates anxiety, depression, serious mental illness.”
On the issue of addiction, Mr. Preece addressed the following question: what are we going to do in the coming years to properly handle the thousands of people who will be knocking on the doors of rehab centers and hospitals? In his view, “synthetic drugs are the future. This is an increasingly large market as consumers globally are moving away from smoked products and towards more discreet ways of consumption.”
