On Monday 31 August 2026, national police motorcyclists in Alès, in the Gard, stopped a car whose number plates did not comply with the rules.[1] Officers noticed a strong smell of cannabis and saw an open bin bag holding yellow packaging sachets on the passenger seat.[1] The driver fled and was caught in a building on the quai de Bilina where he lived with his parents, and police first put the haul at 5 kg of cannabis resin.[2] The young man, a 20-year-old Alès resident previously unknown to the courts, was arrested in the Rochebelle district, one of four dealing spots police have identified in the town.[3] Weighed at the courthouse, the bin bag held 4.3 kg of cannabis resin, and a jute sack in the same car held 1.4 kg of cocaine.[1]

After his police custody the suspect was brought before the Alès public prosecutor, who ordered him held in provisional detention until a hearing on Thursday 3 September under France’s comparution immédiate procedure, a fast-track hearing used for clear-cut cases.[2] At the hearing the prosecutor accused him of acting as a courier, a mule, carrying the drugs for people investigators had not identified.[1] The man said he had been forced, that threats against his family frightened him, and that the goods had been left in his car.[1] The prosecutor asked for three years in prison, one suspended with probation, and for the man to stay in detention.[1]

On 3 September 2026 the Alès court gave him two years in prison, one of them suspended with probation, and did not keep him in detention.[1] A police source said the force was active against drug dealing in the town, and the September accounts put the number of people jailed in drug cases in August at 19.[3]