Drugs and politics – a lethal cocktail?

In his reply to budget criticism in parliament last Tuesday, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat chose to end his delivery with a call for Malta to become ‘more liberal’.

Significantly, he saved for last his government’s plans to decriminalise drug use: an indication of the importance attached to this policy as a major plank in the Labour government’s ‘progressive, moderate’ agenda.

“We must be courageous and start talking about the need to decriminalise drugs,” Muscat told a packed House, which had hitherto been the scene for much cross-floor bickering and acrimonious altercation. “We may not take the most popular decisions, but we take those we feel are the most just. The biggest challenge of all will be the decriminalisation of drugs.”

This, he claimed, would mark a “generational change” from past attitudes towards the same phenomenon.

Certainly it makes a change from the more traditional approach to drugs by Malta’s two main political parties. The word ‘drogi’ has in fact reverberated across the political media for the past 20 years at least: often as not proving to be a minefield that politicians can only tread at their own great peril.

Witness, for instance, how the controversial presidential pardon granted to convicted drug trafficker Francisco Assis Queiroz in the early 1990s had radically altered the state of political play between the two parties at the time: opening up a whole new arena for political warfare.

This case alone arguably set the stage for the same draconian laws that Muscat now intends to downscale. Reacting to Opposition allegations that his government was in the pockets of ‘drug barons’, Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami had at the time radically harshened the penalties for drug trafficking: imposing a mandatory prison sentence for all cases, regardless of substance or quantity; and retaining a system which failed to distinguish between ‘trafficking’ and ‘cultivation’ for personal use.

The effects of these changes were to be radical and far-reaching. Over the next 20 years, Malta witnessed an increasing number of manifestly unjust drug-related sentences: the most archetypal of which remains the case of Gisela Feuz, a Swiss teenager jailed for six months in 1995 over minuscule quantities of cannabis resin found in her handbag at the airport.

Coming so soon after the early release of Queiroz – who, unlike Feuz, had imported 3.5 kilos of cocaine – the vastly different weights and measures only reinforced the impression of a criminal justice system which was ‘strong with the weak and weak with the strong’.

After a number of analogous cases in which harmless foreigners were arrested over insignificant amounts of cannabis, then Home Affairs Minister Tonio Borg was forced to personally intervene. The mandatory prison sentence stipulated by the earlier drug law reform was eventually removed.

Nonetheless the law to this day retains basic flaws… a hangover, so to speak, from the days when political parties competed over the most ham-fisted drug policies, all against the backdrop of mounting media hysteria regarding the drugs ‘plague’.

Drugs: the political side-effects

But the relationship between drugs and politics in Malta goes well beyond sporadic legislative reforms and allegations of corruption here and there. Apart from their various mind-altering properties, illegal drugs also seem to have deleterious side effects on political careers.

One early political casualty of the war on drugs was former Justice Minister Charles Mangion, who was made to resign in 1998 over another Presidential pardon given to another convicted drug-trafficker.

Mangion’s actual involvement in this case turns out under scrutiny to have been minimal – it was more of an administrative oversight than anything else – but such was the political furore his own party had kicked up over the earlier Queiroz case, that Prime Minister Alfred Sant had little choice but to put his money where his mouth was, and axe his own lieutenant.

To date, Mangion’s resignation is still cited as the ‘exception that makes the rule’, in a country where political resignations are few and very far between.

Even more pivotal an example was the (technically unsolved) attempted assassination of Richard Cachia Caruana in 1994… a case which also had drug overtones (at least, according to the prosecution at the time).

The man eventually charged with this crime was Meinrad Calleja, a convicted drug trafficker. Calleja’s earlier conviction had led directly to the resignation of his father, Brigadier Maurice Calleja, as commander in chief of the Armed Forces. The prosecution’s main thesis was that Meinrad Calleja had pinned the blame for his father’s resignation on Cachia Caruana, the Prime Minister’s personal assistant, and plotted his murder in revenge.

In order to nail the chief suspect, a Presidential pardon was given to Joseph Fenech (aka Zeppi il-Hafi)… among other things, over a drug trafficking charge.

As with the Queiroz affair, Labour’s media machine was quick to capitalise on the enormous political advantages afforded by this messy state of affairs. Calleja was eventually acquitted, in a case which arguably dented Fenech Adami’s reputation as a political leader who (in the eyes of his supporters, at any rate) could do no wrong.

The inescapable impression that arises from all these cases is that ‘drugs and politics’ make for an arguably lethal cocktail, to be handled with the utmost care. But there are also indications that times have changed… and with them, the perception of both drugs and politics.

‘Helping the victim’

Contacted by this newspaper, Beppe Fenech Adami – shadow minister for justice (and, by an interesting coincidence, the son of the prime minister who introduced many of the laws in question) – does not predict any major political earthquakes as a result of this proposal.

“Bear in mind that the bill itself has only just been tabled… in fact I’ve just picked it up and intend to read it thoroughly tonight,” he said when contacted this week. “But when the white paper was launched a few months ago, the party issued a statement to the effect that we agree that drug users, people found to be in simple possession of drugs, should not be punished, but helped.”

Fenech Adami nonetheless reiterates the traditional view that, while the victims of drug use need help, the law should remain unchanged when it comes to drug pushers.

“We must distinguish first and foremost between victims and traffickers. Certainly there should be no leniency shown towards traffickers. But with victims, the situation is different. Today, all major schools of thought are in line with the view that punishing the victim does more harm than good. This is why we believe that drug users should at least be given a chance to kick the habit.”

As long as the proposed bill sticks to this basic principle – “and from what we’ve seen so far, this would appear to be the case” – Beppe Fenech Adami foresees no political difficulty in pushing the reform through.

The ‘schools of thought’ referred to by Fenech Adami also include Malta’s main drug rehabilitation service providers: though significantly, agencies such as Caritas retain serious reservations about decriminalisation. 

Paradoxically, Fenech Adami himself had earlier expressed doubts about the reform: in particular with regard to the proposed classification system which will distinguish between different drugs on the basis of harmfulness.

In July, he was quoted as saying that “the white paper should be guided by the common good rather than common sense,” adding that: “classifying between hard and soft drugs would be unwise as it would invariably justify or encourage the consumption of the other so-called inferior drug.”

A few months later, the political rhetoric seems to have been toned down. And this may point towards other significant changes to the political landscape in recent years.

All liberals now

Malta’s changing attitudes to drugs seem to follow on directly from the country’s changing attitudes towards other social issues. On this level, too, there are analogies between the situation today, and that of the early 1990s when the war on drugs was at full pitch.

Twenty years ago, the Nationalist government under Eddie Fenech Adami was arguably at the pinnacle of its political achievements. The Opposition, on the other hand, lay in tatters following almost a decade under Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici; and its new leader Sant, elected in 1992, was roundly pooh-poohed at the time as a continuation of the much-maligned ‘Old Labour’ (having been president of the party in the 1980s).

Much the same applies to today’s scenario, only with the roles reversed. Muscat’s Labour administration is still riding the crest of a wave that landed it in government with an unprecedented nine-seat majority; the PN under Simon Busuttil is struggling to find its feet after the same wave swept it out of office in March 2013. And like Sant in 1992, Busuttil is portrayed by his adversaries (fairly or unfairly) as a straight continuation of his predecessor’s legacy.

Part of that legacy involves a reputation for social conservatism, which took a severe knock with the divorce referendum of 2011. Busuttil has committed himself to changing the Nationalist Party tack following the divorce debacle; but immediately, his plan hit a snag when the PN voted against civil union legislation in parliament… earning itself rebukes from the LGBT community.

From this perspective, Muscat’s timing in raising the issue of drug decriminalisation might also be viewed as a political strategy in its own right. The Nationalist opposition today has reason to be wary of projecting itself as an arch-conservative party, in a milieu which has shifted considerably towards the more liberal political centre.

Could Muscat’s decision to play the decriminalisation trump card precisely now – when the Opposition appears to be clawing its way back – also be a political ruse to force the traditionally right-wing PN into a position where it may alienate its more liberal supporters?

If so, he is likely to be disappointed, as the PN does not look likely to take the bait at this stage.

The medical revolution

One of the more innovative aspects of the proposed legislation concerns the regulation at law of ‘medical marijuana’: and it is arguably here that the possibility of political discord may arise.

Claudio Grech, shadow minister for health, hinted in comments to this newspaper that the bill may give rise to additional health problems

“Specifically from a health policy standpoint, we [the PN parliamentary group] believe that there are multiple aspects which need to be duly considered in the legislative process.”

These aspects include the change in the usage pattern of prohibited drugs arising out of the proposed landscape.

“This would have to be considered both from physical and mental health perspectives for those who consume these drugs. In this regard, the impact of increased or decreased prohibited drugs usage is also a relevant matter from a health policy standpoint, since it will invariably have an impact on healthcare patterns which the national health service needs to provide for.”

Grech also predicts that “increased or decreased prohibited drugs consumption can have also a series of public health considerations which have a bearing on the wider public health and which need to be actively considered in this regard.”

But it is in the use of cannabis as a medical treatment in its own right that the bill is likely to have its greatest impact on public perceptions.

Former health minister Godfrey Farrugia – who contributed directly to the proposed bill – explains that part of the new law was inspired by his own experience as a medical practitioner.

“I was pleased to note that the prime minister mentioned cases where cancer patients had to smuggle medications based on cannabis into the country, because under the current laws they are illegal,” he said.

Farrugia himself had encountered such cases, and it was on the basis of this personal experience that the bill was broadened to also regulate cannabis-based treatments for terminal illnesses such as cancer, multiple sclerosis and even AIDS.

“It must be pointed out that we are talking about symptomatic relief, and not a cure,” Farrugia added: pointing out that apart from the mind-altering agent which is widely used recreationally, cannabis also contains other chemical compounds (known as cannabinoids) which can be isolated and used in the treatment of specific ailments.

“Cannabis has over 240 chemical components, 84 of which are cannabinoids… and of these, only three have been scientifically demonstrated to be effective medically. There are indications that others may also have benefits… but in the scientific world it is what is proven that counts.”

Contrary to widespread perception, ‘medical marijuana’ is not the same thing as the cannabis one might buy from a street dealer.

“We are talking about chemical preparations approved by international medical authorities. These are highly specialised drugs which make use of the chemical components of the isolated, beneficial cannabinoids.”

The products themselves tend to be administered either in the form of drops ingested orally, or as an aerosol spray (of the kind commonly associated with asthma).

Certainly, none of these medicines can be ‘smoked’, in the same way as the popular recreational drug derived from the same plant.

But even if medical marijuana bears no resemblance to the street drug of the same name, the fact that the plant itself is acknowledged to possess medical properties – and, equally significantly, that these will be regulated at law with the consent of both parties – may in the long term do more to change perceptions of drugs than the proposed decriminalisation itself.