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local
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Give-away ecstasy
By Miriam
Dunn
A shortage
of certain drugs on the market has led to users, especially youngsters,
turning to other more dangerous substances which have come down
in price over the past six months.
Informed
sources told MaltaToday that since the beginning of the year,
there has been a scarcity of cannabis on the market, which has
pushed the price up more than three-fold.
They said
that simultaneously, certain drugs, including ecstasy, have fallen
in street price drastically.
The trend
has prompted concern that youngsters who have found that cannabis
is out of their price range, or simply unavailable, are turning
to ecstasy instead to get a "value for money" fix.
The sources
estimate that the street price of ecstasy has dropped from Lm10
each to Lm3 per pill over a six-month period, making it easily
affordable for youngsters, among whom the party drug is most popular.
"In
fact, if you take into account that many younger revellers tend
to drink water or energy drinks when they take an ecstasy tablet,
the cost of an evening out for them would work out much cheaper
than if they were, instead, opting to drink alcohol," they
said.
In contrast,
Lm10 is estimated to buy a user just 0.8 grams of cannabis (three
joints), whereas a few months back the same money bought around
three grams of the drug, which would make 10 joints.
The fluctuations
in the illegal drugs market are thought to result from a number
of successful drug hauls carried out by the Drugs Squad.
But while
many will be praising the police’s efforts, there is concern
that drugs that have plummeted in price and become dangerously
affordable, such as ecstasy, are much more harmful than their
‘soft’ counterparts which are widely unavailable.
In fact,
the lethal damage ecstasy can do hit the headlines just last week
when a young Zebbug man was found guilty of manslaughter for supplying
a friend with a pill prior to a rave party.
Last week,
the Home Affairs minister Tonio Borg announced in Parliament that
the police had arraigned 43 people in court on drug-related charges
during the first five months of this year.
Giving details
of the drugs seized, Dr Borg said police had confiscated 26 grams
of cannabis grass, 2 kilos, 682.5g of cocaine, 1,060 ecstasy tablets
and 187.9 grams of heroin.
The minister
also said that a total of 717 people were arraigned on drug-related
charges between 1991 and the end of April this year. From this number,
319 were convicted, 107 were acquitted and 291 cases are still pending.
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