By The Institute for Strategic Dialogue

In the last year, a loose network of actors from Bordeaux to Toulouse to Paris targeted drag events aimed at all-ages audiences for protest, harassment, and abuse. The behaviors and dynamics observed among these actors echo and mirror those observed in other parts of the world, particularly the US. While anti-drag action in France remains marginal compared to the activity witnessed in the US, UK, and Australia, it nonetheless emerged as a phenomenon from a standing start in 2022. March 2023 saw the nation’s first in-person protest at an all-ages drag event in Paris, and two months later a far-right group protested with banners and a smoke bomb outside of a library hosting a drag queen story hour (DQSH) for children in the small village of Saint-Senoux. A seemingly unlikely group of actors is leading this charge. The French anti-gender movement, which was at the heart of the movement against equal marriage in the early 2010s, has been joined by far-right parties and politicians, extremist groups, COVID-19 skeptics, and assorted conspiracy theorists. All are seeking to cancel drag events through tactics of protest, petitions, harassment, misinformation, and intimidation. This briefing provides an in-depth analysis of five cases of anti-drug mobilization in the period December 2022 – May 2023, using a combination of ethnographic methods and social media data analysis to examine activity related to each case. The first was in Bordeaux, the second in Lamballe-Armor, the third in Toulouse, the fourth in Paris, and the fifth in Saint-Senoux. While the earlier campaigns largely manifested online with limited in-person mobilization, the two most recent events saw increased offline activity. This report aims to summarise the key narratives, tactics, and actors involved in anti-drag action in France, and how these mobilizations are tied to anti-LGBTQ+ activity in France more broadly. However, given the small number of instances of anti-drug activism in France, the conclusions of this report are indicative and tentative.

London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2024. 24p.

By Kevin Brookes and Édouard Hesse

Bringing new and innovative ideas to light and advancing liberal reforms is the core mission of the European Liberal Forum. We do not do this alone but in close cooperation with a network of member and partner organizations across Europe. The present English translation of an original report by the French liberal think-tank GenerationLibre is part of this broader effort. Through this collaboration, we hope that the report’s important messages will reach a wider audience, in Europe and beyond. What better topic to start our collaboration than cannabis, as plans for the liberalization of the drug unfold across the continent. In December 2021, Malta became the first EU Member State to legalize the cultivation and personal consumption of cannabis. The new German government is contemplating similar legalization, and other countries could follow suit. Legalizing is a difficult endeavor, as this report shows, but a necessary one since the detrimental consequences of criminalization have never been felt more clearly. Prohibition is a failure. It has not managed to stem the rise in cannabis consumption rates, either in Europe or worldwide; it has failed to protect users from the most acute forms of harm; and it has contributed to the growth of criminal networks. This can be seen in Europe, where entire swathes of our cities are under the control of organized crime, whose main revenues originate from the illegal cannabis business. Those who prohibition should in theory protect the most, youngsters who are most at risk of harm when using the drug, are the main victims, sometimes literally, from the current situation. Prohibition is also at odds with our liberal values. The state should inform and provide a helping hand to those who err but should not prosecute and imprison people who have freely decided to engage in risky practices. The law should refrain from expressing moral judgments and only prohibit behaviors that bring significant harm to others or society. From this perspective, there is only a weak basis for prohibiting cannabis, a substance far less problematic for public health than alcohol and tobacco  Fully legalising cannabis is the only way forward. But decriminalization is only a first step towards the inclusion of cannabis in the normal legal channels of the economy. It would not only constitute a significant reform of our police and criminal justice systems, but it would also enable public authorities to devise an effective public health policy, targeting youngsters especially. It would also allow an entirely new economic sector to flourish, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs across Europe and generating a considerable amount of revenue for the public purse. Based on a systematic and thorough review of past and current experiences in cannabis legalization, this report shows, perhaps unsurprisingly, that, as in many other areas, free market solutions are superior to state planning and state monopolies. Only a legal solution that is sufficiently cheap and competitive can replace the black market and bring the benefits expected from legalization. The state should regulate the product and ensure that those who participate in the cannabis business offer sufficient guarantees but it should not arbitrarily set prices or restrict distribution channels – to do so would run the risk of having legalized ‘for nothing’. Europe has all the cards in hand to be at the forefront of drug policy reform and show the rest of the world that another path is possible. Courage and method are all we now need  

Brussels:  European Liberal Forum EUPF , 2022. 53p.