A French MP was apprehended by police in Paris last week as he bought 1.35 grams of the designer drug ‘3-MMC’ from a teenager dealer. Andy Kerbrat, who is a member of the far-left La France Insoumise, admitted this on Tuesday and confessed to being addicted.
The reaction from most MPs was largely sympathetic. He’s not the first parliamentarian to have admitted his use of narcotics. Last year Emmanuel Pellerin, a member of Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party, confessed to cocaine use and a senator was arrested by police after he was accused of drugging a female MP as part of a plan to carry out a sexual assault (he has denied any wrongdoing).
In the wake of that allegation, the MP Caroline Janvier spoke of the culture of excess within the National Assembly, claiming ‘there are evenings when drugs are circulating’. Heavy drinking was also common and Janvier concluded that ‘politics manufactures deviant behaviour’.
One of the few politicians to take Kerbrat to task was Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau.
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