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14 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 30 MAY 2021 NEWS MATTHEW VELLA THERE has been a sea-change in Mal- ta's attitude to drugs. Today the island is sounding out the country's stakeholders on a relaxation of prohibition rules on recreational cannabis, to allow people to home-grow cannabis for personal use at home. After its first steps to remove punitive or mandatory prison terms for cannabis users, the Labour government in 2017 proposed a national debate on recre- ational cannabis in its electoral pro- gramme. It was a subject that enabled it, in part, to portray a fresh outlook on society amongst its younger electorate at a time when it came under fire over cor- ruption allegations. Since then, a technical committee ap- pointed to study the local and interna- tional context has found that the judge- ments from the Maltese law courts in the last two years had shown the need for "progressive amendments" on cannabis rules. Chief among them was the Marie- claire Camilleri case, in which the courts found that cultivation of the cannabis plant even in excess of the current legal limit of one plant, could be for the per- son's exclusive use. Indeed, this landmark case led to impor- tant legislative amendments almost im- mediately, which gave the Court discre- tion on effective imprisonment, if it was satisfied that the cultivation in question was for the exclusive use of that person. In the Fabio Ignazzitto case, the accused was found in possession of 118 grams of cannabis, which he claimed was for his own personal use. The Court determined that the law gave no direction on what could be used to determine the use of the substance, and therefore, it could apply its personal discretion. Indeed, the Court considered that from the circumstances of the case, one could indeed determine that the possession of the substantial amount of cannabis was for the accused's personal use. Missing from the official government narrative on cannabis is the tragic story of Daniel Holmes, who in 2011 was con- victed to 10 years in jail after cultivating cannabis. Holmes was 28 when he was arrested in 2006 at his Gozo flat, where he was growing cannabis plants that he insisted were for his personal use. The police said he was found with just over a kilogram of dried cannabis and 0.24 grams of cannabis resin, with a to- tal value of some €13,000. But Holmes disputed the way the authorities calcu- lated the amount and value of cannabis he was charged with trafficking. Holm- es explained that when his plants were first tested, the buds were found to have a relatively normal THC content, in the range of 15%. The samples the police had presented in court were found to be a lot weaker – suggesting that the THC con- tent had been diluted by other parts of the plant that do not contain any THC. "It [the sample presented in court] was something like 4% THC, you can tell they just chucked in the stalks and everything," he had said resignedly. He stressed that the weight, and therefore the drugs' value, would have been much less had only the valuable part of the plant been weighed. Moral panic of the 1990s Yet 30 years ago, the island was caught up in a moral scare on the ravages of drug use, in part compounded by problem heroin users checking into Malta's drug rehabilitation centre and the far reaches of addiction in middle-class households. As told to this newspaper earlier this year, the former coordinator of Caritas's Drug Rehabilitation Programme, psycho- therapist Mariella Dimech, says drugs' popularity have always been influenced by price and availability. "Cocaine in the 1980s was a rich man's drug," whose high price meant it was always in short sup- ply then. Problem drug users then would have graduated from cannabis, perhaps to psychedelics, but finally heroin. Today the highly addictive drug has one of the lowest usages among the adult popula- tion in Malta, and users of the drug are the majority of cases admitted for detox programmes. Of the 1,943 people who sought treatment for their addiction in 2020, 1,126 were heroin users. But these users are an 'ageing' population: 41% en- tering rehab are younger than 35 in 2019, which is down from 45.5% in 2018. Today Malta has an average 1,049 daily opiate users, down from 1,161 in 2018 – again a sign of the downward trend in the drug's usage. The ravages of heroin in the 1980s turned the 1990s into a time of anti-drug hysteria. National campaigns against drug use of any kind turned Sedqa into a household name. Even political slogans weaponising the moral panic on drugs (Michael Frendo, then as sports minis- ter, was keen on using 'sport u droga ma jimxux id f'id in the 1996 campaign). The Nationalist government at the time was clear that decriminalisation would never be on the table. It was a stand that result- ed in numerous convictions for negligible amounts of cannabis – the most embar- rassing case in the 1990s being that of 16-year-old Swiss national Gisela Feuz, jailed for less than 8 grammes of hash; ironic given that a seasoned drug traffick- er such as the Brazilian runner Francisco Assis de Queiroz, who had imported over 3kg of cocaine, benefited from a pardon to return home after contracting hepati- tis in prison. Against the 'gateway drug' myth Today that hysteria is being directly challenged by the Labour administration, as evidenced in its White Paper's com- mentary on decriminalisation and the repudiation of the gateway myth prop- agated by the Reagan administration of the 1980s. "In the 1980s, US President Reagan's administration popularised the theory that cannabis use is the bridge – or gate – leading to the use of harder drugs. The demonisation of cannabis as the 'gateway drug' led to the widespread, severe criminalisation of the possession and personal use of cannabis. "Over the years, various scientific jour- nals debunked this theory. This research showed cannabis, as the most widely used illicit substance, is of course more like- ly to be used by persons who also make consume hard drugs. Such correlation, however, cannot be correctly defined as causation, and therefore, cannabis use is not related to a higher probability of other drugs," the government states in its White Paper. While many voices today are ques- tioning Malta's decision to forge ahead Many voices in Maltese society are questioning the need for decriminalisation of cannabis, yet few ask why the medicinal herb was made illegal in the first place. Today the Maltese government is openly challenging the notion of the 'gateway drug' championed by so many American administrations Reefer madness