THE mayor of Bègles, a small municipality of 30,000 inhabitants close to Bordeaux, wants to make his town a testing ground for the supervised legalisation of cannabis.
Mayor Clément Rossignol Puech’s proposal to experiment with the production, sale and consumption of cannabis in Bègles has its origins in two recent reports. One by the ‘Mission d’Information sur les Usages du Cannabis’ (fact-finding mission on the use of cannabis), held at the National Assembly in 2021, and the other by the Conseil Economique, Social et Environnemental (CESE) in 2023. Both these reports came out in favour of supervised legalisation of cannabis.
Convinced of the need to reform the existing legislative framework, the mayor of Bègles sent a letter to the President of the Republic earlier this year, presenting this experimental proposal.
When I pressed the ‘send’ button, I felt I’d done my duty,” he told Newsweed in March. It was the first time I had publicly committed myself to the legalisation of cannabis, even though it’s a subject I’ve known about for a long time”.
The mayor says he is motivated by several objectives, including the reduction of illicit trafficking and the violence associated with it, relieving congestion in the judicial system, providing better support for users, to curb consumption by young people through quality control and to contribute to regional economic development by setting up a new agricultural sector.
🍁Aujourd’hui, avec une cinquantaine de personnalités de tous horizons , nous nous mobilisons dans @leJDD pour un droit à l’expérimentation locale de la légalisation encadrée du cannabis !
Je vous explique pourquoi dans un fil 🧶 ⤵️
— Clément Rossignol Puech (@clemrossignol) June 4, 2023
To achieve this, he intends to mobilise the nation’s driving forces around his project. An article published last weekend in The JDD and signed by some fifty personalities from all walks of life calls for ‘experimenting with a local model for legalising cannabis’ and co-constructing ‘a model that corresponds to the needs, expectations and capacities of our territories, a local model that really works’, probably comparable to what is already taking place in Switzerland and what is partly planned for Germany.
On Thursday June 15, a round table will be held in Bègles, featuring members of the French Economic, Social and Environmental Council, the National Secretary of the Syndicat de la Magistrature, addiction experts and doctors, as well as a CBD producer. The aim of this open event is to outline the desirable framework of a French model for the regulated legalidation of cannabis production, sales and consumption.
Full details are available on the town hall website.
