Criminalise our children, please…

I don’t think I have ever seen quite so sad a spectacle as the sight of three grinning Maltese mothers urging the authorities to criminalise their own children.

Yet there they were, three Maltese mothers, beaming from ear to ear as they defended a hopelessly flawed legal system that destroys far more lives than the drug it is supposedly trying to protect them from.

But let’s take a step back and look at where this is all coming from. Malta, like any other country, has a drug problem. It is useless denying it: we have the highest rate of heroin addiction in Europe, endlessly confirmed by surveys such as ESPAD and EMMDCA (both conducted by the EU). These same reports also confirm that – unlike the trend anywhere else in Europe – heroin use is actually on the increase in Malta, while the average age of people smoking cannabis for the first time is getting lower.

In a nutshell, more people are doing drugs than ever before… even in prison, as the Josette Bickle case (among others) recently illustrated.

But as I have often observed, just mention the frightening word ‘drugs’, and all logic and common sense immediately flies out of the window. Not only do these ‘Mums against Marijuana’ not see the contradiction in defending a system that translates into a bigger drug problem instead of a smaller one; but they don’t provide any real arguments in defence of their position, either.

Instead, they spell out exactly why the system has failed: “Once young people start out on cannabis, they are exposed to those same circles which provide other illegal drugs, often leading to their subsequent use…”

Small problem with that statement: if ‘people who start out on cannabis’ are exposed to ‘circles which provide other illegal drugs’… well, that is precisely because of the current legal status of cannabis. Being an illegal substance, there is simply no option but to expose yourself to the criminal underworld if you want to get your hands on any.

Like it or not, one is forced to buy from people who may also be trafficking cocaine, heroin, amphetamines and whatnot. You can’t bypass that danger by going to the nearest licensed retailer and purchasing your cannabis legally over the counter... as you can in many other countries in the world, where (unsurprisingly) problem drug use is much less widespread than in Malta.

Cannabis therefore becomes a ‘dangerous drug’, not because of any chemical property it actually possesses – there has in fact never been a single death directly attributed to this drug anywhere in the world – but precisely because it is illegal, and therefore automatically exposes the buyer to a number of risks.

I’ve already mentioned one of these risks: the chance that a buyer (and the younger the buyer, the greater the chance) might be convinced or persuaded to try another drug instead of the one he or she actually wants to buy. This risk simply does not exist in those countries where cannabis can be legally purchased from a licensed provider. Yet it constitutes a major factor in Malta’s burgeoning heroin addiction problem, as the law practically encourages drug pushers to get their clients hooked on the more addictive (and infinitely more dangerous) drug.

The problem is that there is no serious legal distinction between cannabis and heroin when it comes to trafficking. Both substances are on the same list of prohibited substances in the Dangerous Drugs Ordinance: and trafficking of both substances is currently liable to a mandatory prison sentence.

As a result, the law itself incentivises drug traffickers to get their clients hooked on heroin. If there is no real difference in possible penalties for being caught selling cannabis or heroin… what’s to deter you from making more money by selling a more addictive drug which is guaranteed to keep your clients coming back?

Meanwhile, yet another problem that directly arises from the current legal status of cannabis is the possibility of adulteration. And again, the same mothers raise this point themselves, without apparently seeing the contradiction.

“According to Sedqa, there is scientific evidence that the cannabis available on the market at present is of a stronger and more dangerous type than that available in the past,” they argued.

This is probably true. But what factors actually contribute to this adulteration of cannabis? Let’s make a quick comparison with the alcohol situation in countries where it is illegal, and see where it takes us.

Historically, the consumption of home made alcohol sold on the black market in countries like Libya – where alcohol is illegal – has resulted in a high level of blindness and a not-insignificant number of deaths. Last March, 378 people were hospitalised for alcohol poisoning in Tripoli, of whom 51 died. The BBC reported that: “The alcohol in question is a cheap local brew known as bokha. It is distilled from various fruits like figs, dates or grapes. But industrial spirits like methanol are sometimes used to increase the potency of the drink…”

This is basically the result of prohibitionism: if there are no legal standards to conform to, or any obligation to inform your clients of the ingredients, toxicity, or even the strength of the final product, you can only expect the substance in question to become more dangerous than ever.

The same applies to cannabis, although the health risks are much lower even with the ‘more dangerous’ varieties. It is the absence of market regulations, of the kind we associate with any legal product you care to name, that introduces this kind of risk factor. In places like Washington DC or Colorado – where it is now legal to buy cannabis – the product comes labelled with the specific amount of THC indicated on the packet. There are also health warnings and instructions of the kind one associates with any other legal drug: keep out of the reach of children, induces drowsiness, impairs reflexes, etc.

Incidentally, the entire European Union also operates on the same principle: consumers have a right to know what they are actually consuming, and there are legal structures in place to ensure that basic safety standards are met.

The decriminalisation argument merely extends this same principle to cannabis. Yet here we have Maltese mothers who seem to prefer their children to be exposed to the risk of adulterated cannabis, bought from people who also have an interest in getting their clients hooked on other drugs, without giving us any indication of how this will actually make Malta a safer place for their children to grow up in.

Meanwhile, these considerations do not address the somewhat uglier aspect of this maternal plea to criminalise their own children. What is actually gained from arresting and charging a 16-year-old for smoking a joint? As already indicated, this policy has manifestly failed to discourage youngsters from doing drugs. All it has actually succeeded in doing is saddling these poor sods with a criminal record, which will have far more serious repercussions on their future than the occasional joint.

People with drug-related criminal records will find it infinitely harder to find gainful employment when they grow up. Their self-esteem will also take a knock from which it is difficult to ever recover. Teenagers in that situation may feel they have already made a mess of their lives... and it is precisely this sensation that drives many youngsters to delinquency, possibly even to a life of crime.

And the same policy doesn’t bring any visible or tangible benefits to society, either. Apart from scarring those children for life, the same legal set-up has merely hamstrung Malta’s court system, which now struggles to cope with an unfeasibly large number of pending cases involving simple possession of cannabis… cases which would never even get close to a courtroom, not even in those other European counties where cannabis is still illegal.

Yet the very people who should be urging the State to protect their children from all this injustice, are in fact the ones demanding that a failed system continues to ruin their own children’s lives.

How sad…