Drug victims should be helped not criminalised, says AD
Alternattiva Demokratika, the Green Party, welcomed the appeal for the reconsideration of the drug legislation in order that drug users are helped rather then jailed.
Following the appeal made by President George Abela and Caritas for the reconsideration of the durg legislation, AD said in the past similar appeals were made by itself and other experts including Sedqa.
AD spokesperson for social policy Angele Degaura said the President’s and Caritas’s appeal is encouraging: “[They] have endorsed the appeal to reconsider our drug laws and to treat drug addicts as people who need help and not as criminals.”
Deguara said these people should be given support and rehabiliated, “rather than sent to prison where their drug problem might get worse.” She said giving support is more beneficial for both the “victim and society”.
“We have to make a distinction between drug dealers who are the real criminals and their victims,” she said.
AD chairperson Michael Briguglio said that “it is a known fact that the imprisonment of drug victims is only aggravating problems for themselves and their loved ones.”
He said that the Nationalist and Labour Parties prefer “resorting to populist rhetoric and cheap scaremongering, rather than calling a spade a spade and proposing constructive measures to avoid the criminalisation of drug victims".
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Drug addicts should be rehabilitated, and I would also offer them a clean police record if they identify the pushers from whom they buy their drugs.
I would also be willing to come to some form of “arrangement” with the pushers, if they identify whoever is supplying them with drugs to sell – the big boys who are importing the hard stuff from overseas and feeding the trade.
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Is this "help" to be on par with the way druggies help themselves to other people's property?
