Legalisation of drugs 'not the answer', magistrate says

Drug trafficking is ruining Maltese society and the answer is not legalisation, a magistrate has commented as he sentenced a Gozitan heroin trafficker to 30 months in prison and a €1,000 fine.

The case dates back to March 2010 when police had searched the Sannat home of 46-year-old Dorothy Refalo and recovered paraphernalia related to heroin abuse. Police officers had testified to finding the woman still bleeding from a fresh injection site.

Refalo had admitted to having a heroin habit dating back ten years, but denied trafficking. She said she would buy the drug from Jozef Juan Cauchi, himself a heroin user who was later convicted on related charges. But Cauchi had singled out the woman as having sold him the drug.

The seven-year delay was, in part, due to the heavy caseload on the courts, the magistrate observed, but was mostly due to “unnecessary delays by the defence.”

The person responsible for delaying proceedings should not expect a reduction in sentence if found guilty, the court said.

“Drugs are a bad thing and one cannot give in or compromise where something is bad,” magistrate Joe Mifsud said. “Certainly, the problem will not solve itself by thinking that the damage will be lessened by permitting the use of psychoactive substances...The legalisation of so-called 'soft drugs', even if partial, is not only doubtful at a legislative level, but neither does it lead to the expected effects.”