Drug campaigners unimpressed by justice minister’s arrest referral scheme

Like the rest of Europe, Malta seems to slowly be coming round to acknowledging that the global 'war on drugs' has failed. And in keeping with international trends, this realisation began with government's own senior drug policy advisors.

In December 2010, Dr George Grech - clinical director of government's anti-drug and alcohol abuse agency Sedqa - called for the 'urgent' decriminalisation of drug use in Malta. Pointing towards the experience of fellow EU Member State Portugal - widely regarded as a success story insofar as global drug policy is concerned (see box below) - Grech painted a bleak picture of Malta's escalating drug problem. Cocaine use, he said, was increasing across the board at an alarming rate; while reported cases of HIV among drug users had likewise sky-rocketed. 

Eighteen months later, Justice Minister Chris Said appeared to echo Grech's concerns while launching a new scheme for first-time offenders caught with small quantities of drugs. Known by the rather unfortunate abbreviation 'ARS' (Arrest Referral Scheme), the new proposal would enable persons arrested for possession of small quantities of drugs to avoid trial - and with it the possibility of a criminal record - by submitting to the recommendations of a 'panel of experts' instead.

"We want to make it clear the government wants to step up its efforts to fight drug trafficking, but find a system to help drug victims," Said declared - a significant claim, which marked a clear distinction between 'trafficking' and 'possession' where previous administrations (most notably under Eddie Fenech Adami) had traditionally confused the two separate offences, with highly contentious results.

Under scrutiny, however, ARS turns out to be somewhat less than entirely original approach to the problem. Dr Marilyn Clark, chairperson of the National Commission against the Abuse of Drug, Alcohol, and Other Dependencies, explained at the press conference that ARS would provide 'specialised officers' to deal with first-time offenders, who will in turn be able to choose between entering the scheme or facing court charges.

Offenders would retain a clean criminal record, but would have to abide by the conditions handed down to them by an extra judicial body: which significantly includes names of police officers who have been at the forefront of Malta's failed drug policy for the past 20 years.

Furthermore, the idea of a specialised court, geared specifically to hear drug cases, is nothing new to Malta. Former Justice Minister Carm Mifsud Bonnici had in fact already launched a 'drugs court' just last year... and it remains to be seen exactly how 'ARS' will come to function within the confused network of legal structures and facilities that are already in place to tackle Malta's burgeoning drug problem, arguably treading on each other's corns in the process.

Reinventing the wheel

However, the new system has to date elicited sharpest criticism for another reason: the fact that it simply side-steps the entire argument of decriminalisation, and instead repackages Malta's drug policy without essentially changing any of the same policy's widely acknowledged failures.

From a legal point of view, ARS has been criticised for duplicating existing alternatives to criminal procedures. Government MP Franco Debono took time out of his busy political rebellion schedule to discredit the idea in toto: describing ARS as a case of "uselessly trying to re-invent the wheel."

"Conditional discharges given to the accused is a clear case in point, where any first time offender would not have his arrest on his police record," Debono said, adding that it was pointless in setting up a new court, with more experts when there is an efficient system already in place with care workers operational on a 24 hour basis.

Similarly Alternattiva Demokratika - the only local political party to advocate decriminalszation as part of its political platform - dismissed the initiative out of hand. "We are sceptical about the proposed arrest referral system since we believe it is just an electoral gimmick and will not bring about any effective changes in the way the legal system deals with the drug problem and with drug users," Angele Deguara, AD spokesperson on social policy and civil rights, said.

And according to 'Legalise it Malta' - a pressure group whose aims are more or less clear at a glance - Chris Said's proposal fails to address any of the real problems, as (among other shortcomings) it is geared towards first-time users only.

David Caruana, the group's main spokesperson, talks of ARS as a case of giving society "one chance only"

"You bust that chance, and you can forget about 'government policy to fight traffickers but help victims',"" he said. "The helping hand of the state can only extend once - that's all this reform says..."

What campaigners want

And yet in Malta and elsewhere, there is a growing cognizance of the need to move beyond the sort of individual, piecemeal approach taken by governments when confronted with calls for reforms. Caruana argues that the first step has to be a long-overdue classification system.

"First of all, drugs need to be classified. All drugs are different and they need to be assessed by the harms they represent to the individual and to society," he said. "Without proper classification, for a kilo of heroin a trafficker would probably do the same time as one caught with a kilo of cannabis. So the message is: deal in hard drugs like heroin and cocaine, because that's where the money is. No wonder Malta is probably the only European country where hard drugs like heroin and cocaine are cheaper or almost the same price as cannabis..."

Caruana argues that cannabis has been "scientifically proven to be a safer choice than alcohol and tobacco".

"But the government's current failing policies (remember, no classification - higher profits, same risk) seem to have favoured a greater supply of harder drugs. What is even more worrying is that this lack of classification meant that someone growing cannabis for personal use gets a much harsher sentence than a heroin dealer..."

Legalise It Malta focuses only on the legal regulation of cannabis, but Caruana - like George Grech before him - points towards the Global Drug Commission report that states that personal use of all drugs should be decriminalised, in order to shift resources towards helping those who need help rather than criminalising them.

"Softer drugs like cannabis should be legally regulated. As a lobby group we support the legalisation of possession and cultivation of cannabis for personal use, the legal regulation and taxation of sales from a number of licensed outlets. Again, this is in line with the suggestions of the Global Drug Commission Report..."

Global consensus

The Global Commission on Drug Policy includes past presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, the former prime minister of Greece and former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Its basic conclusion reiterates that world governments' approach to reducing drug use has been an abject failure. The report cites statistics from the United Nations indicating that worldwide marijuana use rose more than 8% and cocaine use grew by 27% between 1998 and 2008. An estimated 250 million people worldwide use illegal drugs, the report states, adding: "We simply cannot treat them all as criminals."

For this reason, activists across the world argue that attempts by governments to retain the status quo are motivated by political exigencies much more than by scientific advice, or even practical considerations.

"People just need to look at the evidence," Caruana asserts on behalf of Legalise It Malta. "In countries with harsh prohibitionist laws, the drug problem is greater. In Russia, drug addicts are resorting to a deadly drug called 'krokodil' which literally eats away the flesh: while in more liberal countries like The Netherlands one finds the lowest use of cannabis in the local population compared to other European countries - and they can 'legally' buy it from licensed shops.

"These last 40 years of a failed war on drugs are enough proof that drug policies need a drastic rethink. The war on drugs ended up being mostly a war on users - both casual users who pose no risk neither to themselves nor to others and those who are victims of hard drugs like heroin who really need help until they are cured and not only once."

Portugal: a success story 

In 2001 Portugal became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.

Following decriminalisation, Portugal had the lowest rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over 15 in the EU: 10%.

Between 2001 and 2006, rates of lifetime use of any illegal drug in the 12 to16 age bracket fell from 14.1% to 10.6%; drug use in older teens also declined. Lifetime heroin use among 16-to-18-year-olds fell from 2.5% to 1.8% (although there was a slight increase in marijuana use in that age group). New HIV infections in drug users fell by 17% between 1999 and 2003, and deaths related to heroin and similar drugs were cut by more than half. In addition, the number of people on methadone and buprenorphine treatment for drug addiction rose to 14,877 from 6,040, after decriminalization, and money saved on enforcement allowed for increased funding of drug-free treatment as well. (Source: Time magazine.)