Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/794736
Opinion 25 maltatoday, SUNDAY, 5 MARCH 2017 those at the top. Ironically, politicians should understand this more than most. Their own political structures employ almost exactly the same kind of mechanisms and safeguards. That is why the only people to ever carry the can (with very few exceptions) are always petty officials who execute policy decisions... and never the people who devise policy from above. In any case: street dealers are deliberately too low down in the drug trafficking food-chain to ever really matter. So even if a handful of them are arrested here and there, it takes us no nearer to 'smashing international trafficking rings'. For that, you need surveillance technology, cooperation with overseas intelligence networks, cohesion between different branches of law enforcement capability, and solid, round-the-clock investigation. The police know this perfectly well – because, like I said, when they do investigate the higher levels of organised crime, the results are occasionally quite impressive. But to achieve that sort of success on a regular basis would require investing a lot more resources into the really important investigations... not a lot less. The drug law reform, in practice, has had the opposite effect. Up to a point, I could understand the zeal with which the police used to arrest cannabis users, back in the days when it actually was a criminal offence. But to continue to do so now – when the police no longer even have the ability to even prosecute such cases in court – is manifestly a waste of time and resources. And OK, the Magistrates' Court might have been relieved of the inordinately large number of pointedly useless drug cases that would be filed each year... but these cases have not fizzled out into nothing, either. They have merely been transferred to a lesser, non-criminal tribunal instead, which in practice guzzles just the same amount of public resources to actually function. Even the name attests to the failure of decriminalisation – it's a 'Drug Offenders Rehabilitation Board'. I mean, make up your minds, will you? Simple possession is either an offence, or it isn't an offence. If it isn't – as the term 'decriminalisation' so clearly implies – then how on earth can you have an 'offender'? As for the 'rehab' part: well, wasn't the whole point behind 'decriminalisation' – limited as it was to cannabis – also an acknowledgement that this particular drug was nowhere near as problematic as other illicit substances, such as cocaine and heroin? Certainly, it should have been. I'd like to think that a government would not consider 'decriminalising' something unless it had consulted the experts and ascertained that it was safe to do so. In this case, the expert view – locally and globally – is increasingly leaning towards a reclassification of cannabis altogether. It was, after all, Dr George Grech, the executive director of Caritas – a rehab centre – who had originally called for a discussion on decriminalisation several years ago. In this, he echoed similar arguments made all over the world by social workers, doctors, and even (serving or retired) members of the police force and the judiciary. Again, I would like to think it was partly on the basis of this overwhelming consensus that Bonnici's government went ahead with its 'decriminalisation' plans in the first place. So if cannabis was deemed safe and unproblematic enough to 'decriminalise'... what is there to actually 'rehabilitate', anyway? And that's only insofar as how the reform affects people who are actually arrested for simple possession. What about the organisers of public events, who are still held responsible for drugs found on their premises... even drugs which have been 'decriminalised'? Why do event organisers still have to provide facilities for the police to conduct strip searches for 'decriminalised' substances? Why are DJs with former drug related convictions – some going back decades – still blacklisted? There is, in brief, not a single area where the reform has actually improved the situation facing any of these categories of people. Either that, or I obviously haven't taken enough drugs in my life... because I'll be danged if I can see any improvement myself. I would argue that 'decriminalisation' actually left them all worse off: for while they all still find themselves putting up with exactly the same nonsense as before... today, they also have an insult to add to the injury. They now know that all the hassle they have to go through will be over something that even the government officially acknowledges – on paper, at least – is actually a complete and utter waste of time and effort. And they say that drugs alter your perception of reality. Drugs. Well, what about laws? How severely stoned do you have to actually be, to look at all that and actually see a successful legal reform instead of the astonishing, mindboggling mess it really is? Perhaps the time has come when we stop thinking only in terms of a 'dangerous drug'... and start seriously thinking about 'dangerous laws'. So how about a 'Dangerous Laws Ordinance' instead... you know, to protect the public from the harmful psychological effects of exposure to legal absurdity? GourmetToday every Saturday 16.05pm on TVM Even if a handful of street dealers are arrested, it takes us no nearer to 'smashing international trafficking rings'