The Secretary of State for Relations with Parliament has published a column in which he calls for a referendum on the legalization of cannabis.
Cannabis is making a comeback on the media scene with another round of arms in the government. In a column published in the columns of Obs, Secretary of State for Relations with Parliament, Jean-Marie Le Guen, called for a referendum on the legalization of cannabis.
“Such a fundamental decision cannot be decided by a majority in the National Assembly but by a referendum, because it is not a harmless recreational product but a substance whose dangerousness and health consequences are probably underestimated, ”writes the Secretary of State.
“Ideological lead screed”
In the past, Jean-Marie Le Guen has repeatedly reaffirmed his desire to open the debate on cannabis, a product massively consumed underground, outside any legal and health framework. “It is time to lift the cultural and ideological leaden which hangs over this debate, where the moralist right considers that cannabis is a perversion, while the bobo left would make lax social use of it”, we can still read in this platform which calls for the end of prohibition.
Jean-Marie Le Guen defends “the idea of a regulated and partial legalization, with the maintenance of the penal prohibition for those under 21”. The objective: to legalize in order to better control access to products and the quality of substances, but also to monitor consumers and deploy preventive measures.
The Minister of Health opposed
Which does not quite correspond to the opinion of Marisol Touraine, also quoted in the Obs. “Cannabis is harmful to health and the Minister of Health that I am is therefore totally opposed to its legalization or decriminalization,” she explained.
However, “it is very important to think about the right public policy to adopt concerning its consumption”, she says, believing that it is a “complicated question which deserves to be debated in a more serene framework than that of a presidential campaign ”.
“Hypocrisy”
Also questioned in this case, the president of the UDI Jean-Christophe Lagarde said he was “in favor” of the legalization of cannabis; he advocates the end of “moral postures” in favor of a pragmatic approach. However, the deputy mayor of Drancy (Seine-Saint-Denis) specifies that he is speaking “in a personal capacity” and underlines that “this is not the position of [son] left “.
For Les Républicains (LR), the mayor of Aulnay-sous-Bois (Seine-Saint-Denis) Bruno Beschizza believes that “we must not lift the ban”. His environmental counterpart from Sevran, Stéphane Gatignon, for his part, speaks out for “controlled legalization”, evoking “total hypocrisy”: “I know a lot of people in their forties who smoke, including elected representatives of the Republic, and who refuse the slightest debate on the issue ”.
Find the program L’invité santé with
Prof. Bertrand Dautzenberg,
pulmonologist (Pitié Salpêtrière hospital)
aired on February 5, 2016.
.
