Traffickers withdrawing from Telegram, resellers with sometimes more diverse profiles, and a greater number of socially integrated crack users: the French Observatory of Drugs and Addictive Trends (OFDT) is publishing a report on Thursday, also warning of an "aggravation of the precariousness" of marginalized people who use drugs.
"The use of digital applications and instant messaging by drug traffickers is becoming more widespread and sophisticated," the Observatory emphasizes, in a press release taken from the 2024 annual report of its Trend (Recent Trends and New Drugs) system.
In September 2024, Telegram announced it was changing its moderation rules to cooperate more with French justice, a few weeks after the arrest in France of its boss, Pavel Durov.
A decision which "led to the disappearance of many accounts held by drug traffickers on this platform", notes the OFDT in its report.
"The Potato messaging app, whose operation and graphics are similar to those of Telegram, seems to have often served as a fallback application, alongside WhatsApp and Signal, which were already widely used," the organization points out.
The OFDT nevertheless warns that Telegram continued, in 2024, "to be used for activities related to drug trafficking".
"Although no encrypted platform can proactively monitor private groups, Telegram's moderation teams process reports and remove illegal content to enforce our terms of service," which prohibit "the sale of illicit substances," the platform told AFP.
This report is published in a context where drug trafficking is deeply worrying the authorities, with Gérald Darmanin describing it as a "threat" "at least equivalent to that of terrorism", after the daytime assassination of Mehdi Kessaci in Marseille.
– “Self-employed” –
Based on observations and interviews with various stakeholders, including consumers, social and health sector actors and law enforcement personnel, the system also highlights "a diversification of the profiles of actors involved in local trafficking", reported by several coordinating bodies of the Trend network.
"Young women, non-racialized people or relatively older than the young people usually recruited - in their forties or fifties, or even retired - and with a neat appearance are thus hired to ensure the transport of products or their delivery to consumers," explains the OFDT.
Traffickers also recruit students or young professionals "for their skills in graphic design, digital tool management or communication," the same source continues.
This diversification also involves profiles of "self-employed individuals" or "small teams of two or three people, sometimes consumers themselves", who develop their own clientele via digital applications.
The OFDT immediately qualifies this phenomenon, stating that "the presence of young men experiencing situations of great economic and social vulnerability remains predominant at points of sale."
Another concern highlighted by this report is "a worsening of the precariousness" of marginalized populations whose drug use is documented by the Trend system, "mostly men who are homeless or living in very degraded housing conditions".
The information gathered shows, in line with previous years, "a worsening of their living conditions", linked in particular to their distance from city centers where socio-health structures are located, explains the OFDT.
As in 2023, crack cocaine use intensified in 2024 among these populations, notes the OFDT, as their daily lives were consumed by the search for and use of the drug. For some, it even replaced the use of opioids, such as heroin.
– Inserted crack users –
"A notable finding of the investigations carried out in 2024," the organization explains, is the diversification of the profiles of crack users who seek help from addiction treatment facilities, representing "more people who are socially and economically integrated, sometimes in couples and with children."
For products consumed in the context of "chemsex", the OFDT notes a more systematic use of ketamine, alongside GHB/GBL and synthetic cathinones.
"With few exceptions," the system did not observe a structured market for Fentanyl or its derivatives, nor for other synthetic opioids such as oxycodone.
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