All you have to do is cross an avenue to leave Bordeaux behind and enter Bègles, a town of 30,000 inhabitants where the atmosphere is more typical of a provincial town. At the local market, neighbors greet each other, stop to chat and improvise plans for the same afternoon: in this case a meeting of neighbors with the city council, which aims to launch the first national experiment to monitor the recreational consumption of cannabis, in a plan designed by experts and neighbors that will last five years. It is not the first time that this old industrial city, with a working-class past very present among its neighbors, has drawn the attention of the national press with initiatives that, for more than two decades, have anticipated many changes that were implemented years later. in the rest of the country.
“I am very proud to live in Bègles because it is a pioneering city in many aspects,” says Catherine, a 68-year-old retired teacher, who shops at the local market. On June 5, 2004, Bègles attracted media attention and the fury of many by celebrating France's first gay wedding, ten years before the law permitted it. A union that was annulled by the courts on several occasions and that cost the then mayor, the environmentalist media activist Noël Mamère, a one-month suspension in addition to a wave of threatening letters and demonstrations, with messages saying that this was equivalent to allowing zoophilia. At that time, Mamère, candidate for the 2002 presidential elections and who to this day remains the only environmentalist who has overcome the barrier of 5% of the votes in said elections, endured the situation in a stoic manner and left it to be remembered. some legendary interventions that have inspired numerous progressive councilors and deputies. “What we do today is a gesture against intolerance. It is up to politicians to take risks. “I have a clear conscience because I know that we defend a just cause,” Mamère, who held the position between 1989 and 2017 and was also a deputy between 1997 and 2017, said after the wedding.
A resident of this town governed by environmentalists, Catherine attributes this spirit of change to the commitment of citizens, accustomed to associating and organizing among themselves. “I think people are very motivated, it is one of the last communist cities in France, one of those places where the collaboration of neighbors matters. This is interesting on a political level, since there are many associations and structures that allow this collaborative spirit to be maintained,” she says.
In recent years, Bègles has continued to be at the forefront of eye-catching initiatives. In 2019 it became the first city in France to impose a limit of 30 kilometers per hour on vehicles, with the aim of improving safety on the streets and limiting noise and pollution. The last step is now with cannabis.
According to a 2022 report from the European Center for Drugs and Addictions, 45% of French people have tried cannabis at least once in their lives, making the country the European leader in the consumption of this drug, ahead of Spain. and Italy. In addition, it has close to a million daily consumers in France, and despite being penalized, surveys show that the law does not have a deterrent effect as consumption continues to increase.
This situation led the mayor of Bègles, Clément Rossignol-Puech, to launch a plan in 2023 together with sociologists, jurists and therapists to carry out a local experiment that studies an orderly legalization of recreational marijuana consumption. The plan was presented this Wednesday to the residents and the city council must now present it to the Government to request its approval. In a letter sent a few months ago, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, showed his reluctance in this regard by recognizing that “despite the very high consumption in France” and the increase in recent decades, “it is possible to reverse the trend through a tough strategy of repression and prevention.”
With this experiment, Bègles wants to analyze for five years the effects of a possible legalization in a sample of one hundred neighbors and consumers, who will be followed by a scientific council. “Our goal is to reduce the risk to public health,” says the President of the Addiction Federation Jean-Michel Delile, who makes up the panel of specialists. “When I started in this field several decades ago, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) levels were 5 or 6%, today the majority of the cannabis we access is 20% or more. It is a risk for mental health and addictions. This experiment would allow us to verify our hypotheses and see if the measures are useful to be implemented on a national scale,” Delile commented to the media.
The plan also plans to maintain the ban on minors and its promoters trust that it would help develop a new vein for the agricultural sector in France, the European leader in the production of hemp, which is used in textiles and other industries. For the experiment, a local farmer would plant 600m2 and sell the cannabis at specific points with a price 10% lower than that proposed by the black market. “The farmer would obtain benefits in any case, it is a very profitable plant,” says the mayor, who will not carry out the experiment without state authorization.
The only area in which the experiment will not allow the possible benefits to be explored is in the reduction of drug trafficking, which has already led to scenes of violence and crime in the town. Rossignol-Puech is convinced that, although the Executive does not approve his plan, local pressure will increase now that Germany has approved its legalization and that other border cities, such as Strasbourg, have also advocated following the German example. But if the Government accepts it, Bègles will once again be at the forefront of social experiments in France.
“I like that we have that image of pioneers. It makes us an innovative city that experiments, and I appreciate that it is especially in ecology and food,” says Nathalie Chevalier, a 57-year-old archaeologist who has lived in Bègles for twenty years. Before concerns about food safety became a topical debate, Bègles launched a central kitchen in 2002 that serves more than 2,600 meals daily to school canteens, daycare centers, nursing homes and municipal staff, among others. others.
This kitchen, which in 2025 will be moved to a larger space to cope with the growing demand, works mainly with organic, local and seasonal products, without resorting to preserves or prepared dishes, which earned it the label of “Committed Bio Territory”. In 2014, they launched an alternative meal plan without meat products, which since 2017 has been systematically offered at least one day a week. The city council assures that requests for meat-free menus are constantly increasing and are designed, like the rest of the menus, by nutritionists. Bègles has also been a pioneer in the implementation of waste recycling, transformed into compost or used to produce biogas.
Located within the metropolitan area of Bordeaux, the history of Bègles is closely linked to horticulture, wine production, and later cod drying plants and industry. Although in recent decades economic dynamism has come from the green economy and new digital companies, the working-class character of the city continues to mark its neighbors. Between 1959 and 1989 the city was in the hands of the communists, being governed in the seventies by Simone Rossignol, who was then the first woman elected mayor within one of the 28 towns that make up the Bordeaux agglomeration. The environmentalists have held power since 1989.
A political past that contrasts with that of the department's capital, Bordeaux, which until the environmentalist Pierre Hurmic came to power in 2020 was governed by the conservatives since 1947, with Jacques Chaban-Delmas and Alain Juppé (both held positions of ministers and prime minister).
“Bordeaux is a bourgeois city, and that is noticeable even today. There are many very expensive private schools and shops that not everyone can access. Bègles is a working-class city, here we do not live on income, while in Bordeaux the colonial past predominates, with a lot of money from the families that perpetuate that heritage and those great means,” says Progrès Pérez, a 68-year-old resident, descendant of a refugee from the Spanish civil war.
For Pérez, the new mayor continues in the line of Mamère and his predecessors. “What Rossignol is doing now with cannabis will surely be rejected, but it will serve to launch the debate to which they have invited scientists and citizens. We have been repressing cannabis for 50 years and it doesn't work. For things to move forward, we need people who want them to change, and our neighbors have that associative and committed side,” he defends.
“I am convinced that cities can advance many issues on a national scale. Civil disobedience is part of the environmental spirit and our political arsenal. When you are mayor you have to be careful, but we think that social and human advances are needed and that also involves local combats,” explains the mayor.
In the town, the debate on cannabis has caused fewer schisms than those that gay marriage once created, and although many are skeptical of the change, they have joined this collective reflection, such as the bookseller Thomas Glorieux, 38 years old. “Bègles is proof that things can be done locally. I don't know if I am in favor of legalizing cannabis, but it is interesting that we can discuss among ourselves the issues that have an impact on the people. Even if it does not go ahead, it is a way of saying that we also reflect on the problems that affect us every day and we do not wait for the measures to be imposed on us from the capital.” In Bègles, residents are proud to be one step ahead.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_
#Bègles #town #social #France #tested