Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1544378
The following are excerpts from the interview. The full interview can be found on maltatoday.com.mt as well as our Facebook and Spotify pages. PHOTOS: JAMES BIANCHI / MALTA TODAY We recently saw the con- troversy that emerged after a sponsorship deal between ARUC and the MFA, but ReLeaf was quite silent in the wake of that. What is your position? We took a step back and started seeing the feedback of people who were irked by all this. Our opinion is that there's nothing wrong with helping children play sports. But when ARUC goes to a football pitch to do these political promos and try to score political points, they keep making a mess out of the cannabis reform… Don't you think entities or companies associated with cannabis, alcohol, and gambling shouldn't have a place in sports? I think we should be careful not to increase the stigma against cannabis. Why can't you consume cannabis and be active? But it shows up on doping tests? But how many people who do sports are tested for doping? Maybe 1% or the professional athletes. It's been almost five years since this pseudo-decriminalisation was introduced and instead of advancing the protection of cannabis users, we keep stigmatising them. If we look at the United States, the NBA stopped testing for cannabis in doping tests. If we were still involved in the reform as an NGO, I would've tried to do something similar because it's not a sports-enhancing drug. Why do you call the reform a "pseudo-decriminalisa- tion"? How is it decriminalisation when if you have more than 7g on you, they take you to a police station, ask you questions, or fine you? How is it decriminalisation when you can only grow four plants or only keep 50g at home? The crime is still there. Aren't four plants and 50g not enough? Shouldn't there be some form of con- trol… Control against what? Against having extra can- nabis to sell on the streets. I think that's a moral question. I don't think people with extra cannabis will try to sell cannabis to children outside schools. Ideally, one can grow once and keep all of the harvest, then when you see that you're almost running low, you start to grow again. I see nothing wrong with having a kilo at home for yourself. It's the same as having as many bottles of wine as you want at home. Some people have wine cellars for when they have people over or they're wine enthusiasts as I am a cannabis enthusiast. I wish to have different strains but if we (cannabis users) have people over, we cannot share our cannabis because legally, that would be considered trafficking. Before we started, we were speaking about the Maltese cannabis model and the elements of commercialisa- tion that your NGO speaks about. Can you explain what commercialisation you are seeing? On the front end we have this non-profit system. But in the backend, we know that these associations were told to open private companies to rent their infrastructure to themselves. This is a game to make profit. The problem is that these aren't voluntary organisations as they were meant to be, and if they had been voluntary organisations, we wouldn't see this. But they replaced voluntary organisations with these non-profit organisations which have no regulator or structure; ARUC just created some structure. Now they have these private companies which rent everything to the associations, and as far as we know, ARUC only regulates the associations, not the companies. In the beginning, there was an emphasis against com- mercialisation. How does that affect consumers? They can commercialise as much as they want. But give consumers rights. Don't impose limits on how much we can buy, grow, and store at home. Give us rights first, and then commercialise if you want. We're not against that, but consumers should come first. We don't want to keep ending up in court or police stations because of cannabis… Four years since the re- form, we have legal can- nabis outlets, but in some cases the price of legal cannabis is higher than that on the black market. Is this another failure of the reform? It is and back then we raised the red flag on this because we saw them copy and paste directives from the medical cannabis industry. The associations have to invest a lot of money to get to medical industry level. This has to be reflected in the price. Meanwhile, someone in the black market can just grow cannabis outdoors or in a tent and they can sell it for much cheaper. If they don't relax the regulations surrounding associations' growing operations, obviously the prices will continue to reflect this cost. Is it a problem that the sector is being regulated by people who, let's say, don't come from the cannabis community? I think so because maybe they never went through the fear of approaching a roadblock with some cannabis on you. They've never been interrogated or arrested. They don't understand these things, they just see them as things of the past, when in reality, we need to make sure they never happen again. 7 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 12 ARPIL 2026 INTERVIEW