DOPE STORIES episode 2: Marseille, the New French Connection

Born and bread in Marseille (in 1981), I saw the city getting divided before my eyes. By the end of the 70’s, the french government parked an entire generation of immigrants from the Maghreb (who help rebuild France after WW2 and fought FOR France during the Algerian independence war) in an endless sea of buildings on the outskirt of Marseille (in)famously known as “Les Quartiers Nords”. Those white concrete structures were built in the mid 60’s, when “Corbusian” (2) architects applied their utopian visions on people’s lives. The result: drugs, poverty, alienation, isolation, anger… Rage!

I left Marseille in 2004 to move to New York. Back then, the gap between white “french” people and the 2nd generation of immigrant (100% French but some people tend to forget) was already increasing, the city was fractured.

The French Connection

Once upon a time, Marseille was the mecca when it came to the processing and exportation of heroin. Everybody remembers the French Connection: a 30-year heroin operation between Marseille and the US. A traffic worth more than $40 millions a year back then. Orchestrated by Lucky Luciano, the French Connection provided up to 80% of the US heroin consumption during the 60’s / 70’s. The morphine base from Turkey and Asia was shipped to the Marseille harbor, unloaded on the docks and processed in one of the many clandestine laboratories hidden in the Provence’s countryside to be transformed in the purest heroin ever manufactured (off medical diamorphine): La Marseillaise, as they called it, was 98% pure.

The network was dismantled, and after the 90’s pick, the heroin disappeared from the streets of Marseille (but this is another story…). Today, the few die-hard junkies remaining shoot up Subotex (3) with benzos to “spice it up”… a deadly cocktail. But another traffic emerged: Cannabis and Cocaine.

“Ici on est à Marseille mon frère, Sortis tout droit du conteneur. Le produit qui t’met à l'envers”(4)

Here cannabis is embedded in our culture, quality is high and price low. Good Cocaine, on the other hand, was hard to come by, but now you can get dime bag of high purity cocaine quite easily. Without the presence of organized crime (”le milieu”, as they call it here knew his golden age with the French connection but was dismantled by the early 2000), the city was left in the hands of gangsters (called “bandits” in Marseille) fighting each other to death in a turf war that caused 34 homicides in 2016 (5). A heaven you’ll say compare to the 786 homicides the same year in Chicago, but in a country where firearms are illegal, it gave Marseille the title of “France Murder Capital” and the mainstream media did what they do best: spread the fear, pointing the finger to the common enemy: “Les banlieues” (Ghetto in French) and their inhabitants… The dialogue was broken and the city split in two, the North and its “bandits” versus the South with La Canebiere (Marseille most famous street in the city center) as “unofficial” border.

“Rick James said cocaine’s a hell of a drug. Who else could put the hipsters with felons and thugs. And paint a perfect picture of what sellin’ it does? This is for the critics, who doubted the chemistry. Two different worlds, same symmetry” (6)

I used to come back to my hometown once or twice a year for few days, a couple of weeks at the most. In 2019, I decided to stay over a month. The homicide number that year dropped to 9, I went to the “allegedly” worst ghettos in town: La Busserine, Les Oliviers, Brassens, La Castellane etc… Les Quartiers Nords.

Where no there was no illegal activities , everything was quiet and relax, not once my wife and I felt “in danger”. Where drugs were being sold, everything was even more quiet… Don’t forget, murder and violence is bad for business… and business, in Marseille, is good: at La Busserine alone, the sales of cannabis and cocaine add up to 15,000€/day during the week and up to 25,000€ on weekends with over 500 clients daily. The narcotics sale amounts to 70 millions €/year in Marseille (7), spent and laundered (re-invested) in the city. After some violent years, violence went down and sales went up.

Like any other ghetto, you’ll find here the usual set up: look-out kids (called Chouf, in Marseille slang, translates “look” in arabic) “chilling” on the side of the road and on top of buildings , hidden stashes in apartments, empty lots and garages, dozens of “read-to-sell” bags concealed in pipes and cars’ bumpers, ‘menu’ openly written on wall, obvious selling points (yet distant from the main hang-out spot where kids are playing) and a clientele in and out in less than a minute.

A Les Oliviers, the line of customers almost goes around the block on Saturday nights. Security is insured by the local “muscles” to avoid any “dispute”. Kids from the neighborhood point customers to the right building and tell them where to park their car. The operation is seamless. People are lining up, waiting to buy some hash or weed, a bag of coke for the evening, some K and possibly a couple of ecstasies and MDMA. Choice is broad at Les Olivers, one of the most profitable “cites” (another name for ghetto in France) in town with La Busserine (where the choice is lesser but the quality higher).

Nothing exceptional you’ll say, just another drug traffic… but look closer and you’ll see something I’ve never witnessed in 25 years living in Marseille (and spending lots of time in those “ghetto” as I was boxing in one of their local gym):

I saw white kids hanging out in the "hood” -to buy drugs, I know… but still- with no fear, feeling welcome, joking with locals, even getting drinks at the corner bistro.

Something unthinkable 10 years ago. Something hidden by the media. Something politicians don’t want you to know, to not lose the “fear of the other” they spent so much time to insinuate in our heads.

Let the people believe that only dirty, nasty junkies are going to those dangerous places to buy their dose of dope, whereas it’s their sons, daughters or even colleagues, who are going to get their weed, some pills and maybe a beer before going back to the “right side of the track” to hang out in the trendy and cool bars and restaurants of the “Corniche” and “La Pointe Rouge”

The French Connection is still alive but deeply changed in nature… french people are now actually connected. They’re bounding around something they have in common: drugs. Good or bad, I’m not here to judge, all I know is that as long as there is demand, there will be offer…

In one of the the countries in Europe with the toughest laws on narcotics, French politicians keep on playing Sisyphus (8) with their “war on drugs”…Decriminalization and comprehension healthcare solutions remains the only efficient -and proven- solution to fight drugs…

In the meantime, in the South of France, the new generation is getting together and making its own New French Connection.

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NOTES

(1) Translate: “Already here, the 4th identity from Marseille” Kenny Arkana refereeing to the 4th generation of MCs but also the 4th generation born in France from immigrant descend (2) Le Corbusier philosophy : his vision for residential architecture included a great deal of services, business and activities to have the building self-sufficient and sustainable. He dreamed of "cleaning and purging” the city, bringing “a calm and powerful architecture"—referring to steel, plate glass, and reinforced concrete… This utopian vision has then been applied to low income building ending up in the creation of actual ghettos. (3) Subotex is the brand name for buprenorphine, a drug used to get off heroin (like methadone, yet completely different in its use). If shot, it will get you high, add benzodiazepines such as Xanax or Rivotril (Marseille’s favorite) and you risk the cardiac arrest as it greatly slows down your heartbeat. (4) Translate: “Straight outta the container, the product that’ll fuck your brain up” Fonky Family - Le Retour du Shit Squat (5) https://www.20minutes.fr/marseille/1988379-20170102-marseille-34-tues-balles-lors-reglements-compte-2016-inexact-repond-prefet-police (6) Pusha T - Trouble On My Mind (7) From the show “L’heure des Pros” sur France on August 28th 2020 (8) In Greek mythology Sisyphus or Sisyphos was the king of Ephyra. He was punished by being