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French furore over minister's drug appeal Charles Bremner The Times (UK) Friday 23 Jun 2000 Source: The Times Date: 23.6.00 French furore over minister's drug appeal FROM CHARLES BREMNER IN PARIS JACK LANG, the French Education Minister and star of Lionel Jospin's Cabinet, faced calls to resign yesterday after he suggested that cannabis should be tolerated and backed steps to ensure that only good quality Ecstasy was sold in dance clubs. Politicians and parents' groups were appalled at the idea of a senior minister undermining the state's legal and educational drive against drug use. Philippe de Villiers, co-leader of the conservative Rassemblement pour la France, said that M Lang's remarks were mind-boggling and called for the minister's "immediate departure". During his nine years as Culture Minister and master of ceremonies for the late President Mitterrand, the Parisian Socialist M Lang courted popularity and controversy with actions that included promoting gay rights and giving state support to techno-music, the genre whose followers adopted Ecstacy. By those standards, his latest comments are mild. M Lang's remarks were provocative in his job as boss of France's vast state education establishment. M Jospin brought the popular Mitterrand-era celebrity into his Government last February after crippling strikes by teachers. The minister, aged 60 and still the darling of the Paris showbiz world, said that he had smoked cannabis as a teenager "but without much enthusiasm". France should stop discussing the drug in legal terms and hold a national debate, he told France-Soir. "We should put our cards on the table, working with doctors and educators and not just over cannabis. We should talk about tobacco and alcohol, which are much more destructive among the young." On Ecstasy, which is widely consumed in the booming night-scene of raves and techno clubs in Paris and the provinces, M Lang said he was encouraging welfare organisations that were sending teams out to test the quality of the drugs being sold. "The young should not mess up their health by taking junk. Since drugs are being taken, they might as well be tested," he said. This was too much for the Federation of Pupils' Parents, which accused M Lang of breaching his duty to ensure the moral and civic education of the young. "A drug is still a drug and none is without danger," it said. The opposition UDF party said that M Lang appeared to be advocating legalised Ecstasy. "Did M Lang think about the impossible situation in which he is placing thousands of teachers who are engaged in a daily combat to have French laws obeyed in order to protect our children?" M Lang was praised for honesty by charity organisations that work with the young. M=E9decins du Monde, which advises the young on drug use and monitors the quality of Ecstasy sold at nightclubs, said: "At last here is a minister who is not burying his head in the sand." About 20 people have died in France from taking Ecstasy over the past decade. According to Nova magazine, which reports the Paris night scene, 13 per cent of young people say that they have tried Ecstasy, which costs about £6 a pill in nightclubs. About half of the pills, which go under brand names such as Euro and Zouzou, are of bad quality, according to a Nova journalist. The outcry over M Lang's remarks reflected the tension between the forces of traditionalism and the liberal approach being pursued across the moral front by the Jospin Administration. The Government is being criticised for a publicity campaign against drug use, which says that everybody likes mood-altering chemicals and equates alcohol and tobacco with cannabis and Ecstasy. Conservatives are also angry over the legal recognition of homosexual unions under a new institution that falls little short of matrimony. The Armed Forces have allowed personnel to enter these "gay marriages". The Church and parents organisations are engaged in a court battle to reverse a Government decision earlier this year to make "morning-after" contraceptive pills freely available to school-girls. President Chirac, the figurehead of the conservative Gaullist party, is waging an old-style legal and moral campaign against excessive liberalism. Evidence of the "repressive" approach favoured by the President was visible at Gare du Nord this week as police stopped and searched young fans returning from Euro 2000 matches in The Netherlands, a country where "soft" drugs are legally available. Some European experts have held up France's relatively relaxed approach to the use of drugs as a model for other nations. The country has one of Europe's lowest death tolls from the misuse of heroin and other substances.
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