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15 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 30 MAY 2021 NEWS with decriminalising cannabis, little is often said about the reasons why can- nabis was made illegal in the first place. Malta's drug laws, like other states, are historically conditioned by the United Nations conventions which shaped the global drug control regime: the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961 (SCND); the Convention on Psychotrop- ic Substances, 1971; and the Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, 1988. These treaties made it mandatory for states to criminalise the production, sale, and possession of cannabis for non-me- dicinal or scientific purposes. But in 2018, the World Health Organi- zation (WHO) expert committee on drug dependence took on a critical review of cannabis and called for its removal from Schedule IV of the SCND, given the dis- crepancy in harm between cannabis and other drugs in the same schedule, such as heroin. The recommendations were studied by the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs, and in December 2020, the commission voted to remove cannabis and cannabis resin from Schedule IV of the SCND. But how did we get here in the first place? Fear of Mexicans It is important to go back to what was happening in the United States in the ear- ly 1900's just after the Mexican Revolu- tion, when an influx of immigration from Mexico into states like Texas and Louisi- ana was taking place. With the Mexicans, came their language and traditions... can- nabis, or as they called it 'marihuana', one of these customs. "Americans were actually familiar with 'cannabis' because it was present in al- most all tinctures and medicines availa- ble at the time," write Dr Malik Burnett and Amanda Reiman of the US Drug Pol- icy Alliance. "But the word 'marihuana' was a foreign term. So, when the media began to play on the fears that the pub- lic had about these new citizens by false- ly spreading claims about the 'disruptive Mexicans' with their dangerous native behaviours including marihuana use, the rest of the nation did not know that this 'marihuana' was a plant they already had in their medicine cabinets." The demonisation of cannabis was an extension of the demonisation of the Mexican immigrants. Just as San Francis- co had outlawed opium decades earlier in an effort to control Chinese immigrants, cannabis became the excuse to search, detain and deport Mexican immigrants. "The prejudices and fears that greeted these peasant immigrants also extended to their traditional means of intoxica- tion: smoking marijuana," Eric Schloss- er, author of Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market, wrote for The Atlantic in 1994. "Police officers in Texas claimed that marijuana incited violent crimes, aroused a 'lust for blood,' and gave its users 'su- perhuman strength.' Rumors spread that Mexicans were distributing this 'killer weed' to unsuspecting American school- children." Additionally, the fear of Mexican im- migration was tied in with the fears of miscegenation, and therefore claims of marijuana's ability to force white wom- en to fall for men of colour through the solicitation of sex. That imagery became the backdrop for the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, which effectively banned its use and sales. When that law ruled uncon- stitutional years later, it was replaced with the Controlled Substances Act in the 1970s and cannabis was placed in the highest schedule of dangerous drugs. Although the Schafer Commission disa- greed that cannabis should be Schedule I, US President Richard Nixon discounted the recommendations. In 1996, California became the first state to approve the use of marijuana for med- ical purposes, ending its 59 year reign as an illicit substance with no medical value. "Prior to 1937, cannabis had enjoyed a 5,000-year-history as a therapeutic agent across many cultures. In this context, its blip as an illicit and dangerous drug was dwarfed by its role as a medicine," say Burnett and Reiman. Today 23 American states, plus Washington, DC, have passed medical marijuana laws, and rightfully the public is questioning the utility of keeping cannabis under lock and key. A changed Malta Now Malta has over 1,400 people reg- istering for medical cannabis. Yet, the voices who once also advocated for some form of discussion on decriminalisation, are scared by the pace of overdue change in Malta. Former Caritas campaigner Dr George Grech recently expressed caution on decriminalisation, complaining that too many patients who say they are suf- fering of anxiety, were turning easily to medical cannabis, and in turn, even doc- tors themselves are prescribing cannabis too easily. But in 2011, Grech had argued that a discussion on decriminalisation of drugs – then resisted by everyone, include Dr Grech himself – had become "urgent". At the time he pointed towards Malta's bur- geoning prison population, as well as the now undeniable fact that drugs were just as easily obtainable inside prison than out. "Prison is not giving results," he said. "It's no secret there are drugs in prison, and we have come to learn that incarcer- ation does not work (with) people who are purely drug addicts." At the same seminar, he had also com- plained that Malta's drug system – unlike other European states – made no effort to distinguish between different drugs, such as more dangerous drugs like heroin, and cannabis. By the late 2000s, 'typical' drug users were changing as well. In an interview with MaltaToday, psychotherapist An- na Grech, who specialises in drug ad- diction therapy, had called such drug users in 2010 as 'ACCE' – Alcohol, Co- caine, Cannabis and Ecstasy – pointing out that people requesting therapy were 'poly-drug users'. Even the type of per- son seeking treatment had changed – no longer limited to the stereotype of young, unemployed and overwhelmingly male, or mostly from underprivileged or se- verely dysfunctional family backgrounds. There were more female users, and a mix of people from the very poor to the very well off. It is arguable that recreational ACCE us- ers today have become even more adept at treating controlled substances with a restrained or knowledgeable use, for their prevalence in Malta has never been any more common than they are today. The critics of decriminalisation seek yet more justification for having to allow un- fettered use of a relatively harmless drug like cannabis, now even prescribed as a medicinal. Yet few understand why the drug itself was made illegal, and on what the international consensus of illegality is based on. mvella@mediatoday.com.mt Public enemy number 1: the ridiculous and maligned anti-cannabis movie Reefer Madness of 1936, a cautionary tale in which a trio of drug dealers lead innocent teenagers to become addicted to "reefer" cigarettes by holding wild parties with jazz music Refugees from Mexico at a camp on the desert in Fort Bliss, Texas during the Mexican Revolution, 1910. Despite its medical usefulness, many Americans' attitudes towards cannabis shifted at the turn of the century, partly because of Mexican immigration to the US.