Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/345566
17 maltatoday, SUNDAY, 13 JULY 2014 Why not, I wonder? Why do we apply one set of rules to one set of harmful substances, and another set of rules to another? More to the point: why do we treat people who smoke weed as criminals, when the category of 'people who drink whisky' also includes the occasional magistrate throwing a Christmas party in a courtroom? I have yet to hear a single logical and rational answer to any of these questions. Perhaps Archbishop Paul Cremona would be gracious enough to provide one. This brings me to that other spectacularly utterly flawed argument currently being bandied about. This is how Beppe Fenech Adami expressed it earlier this week: "Classifying between hard and soft drugs would be unwise as it would invariably justify or encourage the consumption of the other so called inferior drug." Taken together, these two observations strike directly at the heart of everything that is positive about the White Paper. Its two most fundamental points concern precisely the need for a classification system which distinguishes between different drugs on the basis of how harmful they actually are... and the proposed partial decriminalisation of cannabis, which in turn represents the same principle (i.e., treating drugs on the basis of their harmfulness) enacted in practice. Incredibly, Maltese legislation still lacks any form of classification system that distinguishes between cannabis, cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, LSD and whatnot… even if the distinction is sometimes (but not always) made by individual judges and magistrates in court. In many cases, the discretion allowed to the judiciary only emphasises the urgent need for a proper legal framework that reflects the reality on the ground. All too often we see different people treated to entirely different punishments for similar or identical offences, merely on the basis of what judge or magistrate they happen to appear before. And the prosecution reserves the right to simply pick and choose between lower and upper courts – where the sentence may vary from a maximum of 10 years to a maximum of life imprisonment – without providing any explanation for the choice. This fact alone prompted the European Court of Human Rights to rule (Camilleri vs Malta, 2013) that "Maltese law was not sufficiently foreseeable in that it did not provide for any guidance on what would amount to a more serious offence or a less serious one." It is partly to bring Maltese legislation in line with this ruling that the White Paper lays down very specific guidelines that distinguish between the seriousness of drug- related charges, based in part on the nature of the drug concerned. From this perspective, it is just slightly upsetting to realise that both the Church and the Nationalist Party are dead set on retaining a system that has been slammed by the ECHR as a human rights violation. It is even more upsetting when you bear in mind that the latter institution is characterised by a marked preponderance of lawyers… yet seems to be entirely unaware of this judgment and its implications. More upsetting still, however, is the clean absence of any semblance of logic in both arguments. There is staggering evidence that treating drug users as criminals only exacerbates the problem. I can cite countless cases to illustrate this point, but this single quote from a 2013 news report - about a 31-year-old woman jailed for heroin trafficking, under circumstances that plainly showed she was herself a heroin addict - should do the trick nicely: "The court also noted the 23-page criminal record of the accused. Between 1993 and 2012 she had 13 drug-related convictions. In one case she was jailed for four years. In another case she was jailed for 10 months. But she seems not to have learned anything." Really? You don't say. So a woman who had 13 drug-related convictions failed to learn anything from serving multiple prison sentences… and what does the court do? Why, it hands her yet another prison sentence. After all, you never know: it may be a case of 14th time lucky… Meanwhile, the White Paper that has been met with such resistance marks a very belated recognition that Malta's present drug legislation is simply not working. It has succeeded only in criminalising people for no particular reason, and – more importantly – has failed abjectly in its most basic objective: reducing the incidence of problem drug use in Malta. In fact it has demonstrably resulted in much higher problem drug use than countries which have pursued decriminalisation policies of their own, such as Portugal. This emerges very clearly from the most recent report by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction. And what do you know? Finally we get a long-overdue legal initiative that might align our country's legislation with some degree of sanity and levelheadedness for a change… and just look who's arguing in favour of a failed and hopelessly illogical approach instead. This, of course, is where I am sorely tempted to shout out that immortal Toto line: not in response to the 'carta bianca' on drug law reform, but to all its critics. Nonetheless, I shall resist the temptation for now. Quite frankly, I don't think I'm the one who needs a padded cell in this argument… Opinion So a woman who had 13 drug-related convictions failed to learn anything from serving multiple prison sentences… and what does the court do? Why, it hands her yet another prison sentence Malta's present drug legislation is simply not working. It has succeeded only in criminalising people for no particular reason, while it has failed in its most basic objective: to reduce the incidence of problem drug use in Malta