Serge Letchimy: "Drug trafficking is eating away at Martinique, and the State is looking elsewhere"

S ince the beginning of the year, sixteen homicides have been recorded in Martinique . Thirteen of them were committed by firearms. This is no longer a series of news stories; it is a spiral of death that is becoming part of our daily lives. And yet, the State is looking the other way.

How many more sirens will we have to hear? How many bodies will have to be covered with a white sheet before the Republic realizes what Martinique is experiencing? We are at war. A silent, brutal, and insidious war—one waged by a now-sprawling drug trafficking network . And we can no longer wage this war alone.

Martinique is now a strategic transit point for cocaine from South America bound for Europe. Colombian and Venezuelan cartels know this. They exploit our weaknesses: insufficiently controlled ports, coastal radars promised for twenty years but never installed, and international cooperation that remains too timid.

[In 2024] only 1,400 containers out of 188,000 were inspected by customs at the Grand Port Maritime de Fort-de-France. And 60% of the cocaine seized in France was seized in the Antilles-Guyana region. Yet, despite these chilling figures, the resources available remain paltry.

Beyond the numbers, an entire society is reeling. Drug trafficking is taking hold in the minds, homes, and choices of our young people. It offers easy money, weapons, and illusory power. It's eating away at our neighborhoods, ruining our families, and killing our future.

Faced with this, what is the government doing? It is eliminating 900 employment and skills pathway contracts by 2025, shattering one of the last social barriers that allowed young people to find their way back. It is multiplying its empty declarations, its symbolic visits, and its publicity stunts.

We, local elected officials, are left alone. And we refuse to remain mere witnesses. Because the greatest risk now is that the idea of ​​self-defense will take root in people's minds. That would be the absolute failure of the Republic.

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