Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1438074
Owen Bonnici Owen Bonnici is minister for Equality, Research and Innovation 12 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 19 DECEMBER 2021 OPINION 12% of our adult population has smoked cannabis at one point in their life. To get an idea and be able to contrast and compare, the nor- mal tobacco cigarette smoking share of our adult population makes up 22%. Despite the widespread use of cannabis, a lot of people contin- uously declare, when asked in the various research projects un- dertaken from time to time, that they do not know of anyone who makes use of cannabis or that they have never ever met anyone who smokes cannabis. Of course, the truth is that those same respondents would have members of their own fam- ilies or friends or colleagues on the workplace smoking canna- bis, but since cannabis is such a criminalized and stigmatized substance, those who actually make use of cannabis keep it hid- den from anyone else. And would you blame them for doing that? I suffer from asthma and when I was a child it affected my life a great deal. Therefore I grew up being averse to smoking. Con- sequently, I have never smoked cannabis and do not intend to do that ever. Yet, in the last days and weeks promoting the cannabis reform, I have been called all sorts of names on social media for push- ing forward a legislation which seeks to put a stop to all this nonsense of treating perfectly respectable citizens as criminals and pushing them in the jaws of criminality. "Junkie" was the most com- monly used term, until PN expo- nents started repeating the idiot- ic assertion that we are doing all this because somehow we stand to gain financially. How we are going to gain fi- nancially from a regularized and controlled situation escapes me but all this goes to show the im- mense stigma which cannabis users had to go through year in year out. And that is why cannabis us- ers are essentially invisible to the rest of society at large. It is as if they are donning a symbol- ic cloak of invisibility to protect them from the hurtful things which the mainstream popula- tion throws at them. This fact, of course, carries a huge downside in the sense that anonymity and lack of familiarity breeds indif- ference and possibly contempt by the "mainstream rest". An experienced judge, who is now retired, used to tell me that the typical Maltese per- son always wants and demands the strictest and most draco- nian measure of justice, except when this strict and draconian measure of justice is going to be served on himself or herself. And that is what happens when people who are quick to throw everything they have at efforts to put a stop to the criminali- zation of responsible cannabis users realize that their own sons or daughters have landed themselves in trouble for secret- ly growing plants of for having been caught with an amount of cannabis in their possession. As a lawyer I had a very busy practice in one of the busiest villages: Zejtun. I still remem- ber the shock a particular very well-educated parent passed through when an Inspector called him from the depot to in- form him that his son was arrest- ed for "dabbling with cannabis". "It-tifel m'huwiex t'hekk (my son is not like that)," he had told me instinctively. He absolute- ly had no idea that his son was a user of cannabis. At the time even a milligram of cannabis landed you in front of the Court of Magistrates sitting in a crim- inal jurisdiction, let alone some 25 grams, as was in this case. And there you had a case of the cloak of invisibility falling down and with it, the dignity and se- renity of the whole family. The client was a perfectly respectable young guy: however he ended up being arrested and brought to Court, facing criminal proce- dures for making use of cannabis on a personal basis. He ended up in the difficult situation of having to tell his employer about the criminal procedures he had to undertake and his otherwise clean conduct certificate was tainted because of this ugly happening, as was his reputation. Statistically, this former client is one of the 12% of the popu- lation who made use of canna- bis. For his family he was their everything. That parent has recently called me on my phone to give me his full support for the reform we are undertaking and pleaded to me, in an almost desperate tone, not to budge an inch. I am aware that the usual con- servative powerhouses in this country, the Lawrence Gonzis and Beppe Fenech Adamis of this world, faced with such a great change, resort to the weap- on which they utilize to perfec- tion: that of instilling the fear of gloom and doom. That is what they did when we were fighting to have the civil right of divorce in our country. They had said that the law would break up families. They did the same thing when we were pushing towards equal- ity in marriage. They had said that the law will cause irrepara- ble harm to the children of same sex couples, whether natural (as in the case of a subsequent mar- riage) or adopted. And that is what they are do- ing now. They are saying that the law will lead to children falling victims of drug abuse. It is our duty to explain and inform the general public about the enormous difference that the cannabis reform will bring to our society. No one should be made to ne- cessitate to be invisible in one's own country. And it should not take anyone the need of see- ing one's son or daughter pass through an ugly experience in the criminal court to realise that. Cannabis reform: the invisibles