In France, Drug Traffic Spreads to Small Towns

For centuries in Morlaix, a city of cobblestones and creperies on the Breton coast of France, the best-known dealers were the ones who traded in linen during the Renaissance and built a number of unique half-timbered houses in the middle of town.

The new dealers are another story.

France, long a major European market for illicit drugs, is experiencing a new eruption of concern over its domestic drug trade, and the violence that often accompanies it. In the past few years, experts say, the trade in illicit drugs has become more noticeable in France’s small and medium-size cities, bringing a measure of insecurity to places that had once felt sleepy and safe. Morlaix, with its population of about 15,000, is among them.

“We are confronting a tide of cocaine — a new thing,” said Jean-Paul Vermot, the mayor.

On a recent morning, Mr. Vermot gave a tour of Morlaix, pointing with pride to its quaint marina, the City Hall balcony where Gen. Charles de Gaulle delivered a speech in July 1945 and the 18th-century tobacco factory that has been transformed into a cultural center.

He also showed the park bench where, he said, a group of young dealers three years ago threatened to kill him and burn down his house. He showed a public housing complex where he said drug deals were recently made in the open before a police crackdown. He showed a door of a residence still riddled with bullet holes, a recent effort by a group of young dealers to intimidate another young man in debt to them.

Faced with what has been called the “simultaneous explosion” of supply and demand for illegal drugs, French officials nationwide are embracing proposals to crack down on traffickers. Conservative politicians have taken to blaming casual consumers, including marijuana smokers, for supporting a deadly industry at a time when some governments in the Americas and Europe have decriminalized or legalized cannabis.