Police intensify ‘war on cannabis’

At 4.20pm Saturday afternoon, Maltese activists joined the so-called 'Global Marijuana March': a worldwide initiative which this year specifically aims to challenge a quasi-global policy of treating soft drug users as criminals.

At the time of writing it remains to be seen what sort of turnout the local event will attract; but however many activists attend, they will be in good company. Worldwide, hundreds of thousands of protesters typically attend such events, with the larger congregations registered in places such as Los Angeles, Toronto, New York and Dunedin (New Zealand).

Participation has been notably less enthusiastic in Europe, but recent developments such as 2011's Global Commission on Drug Policy report - which stated that that "the criminalisation of illicit drug users is fuelling the HIV epidemic and has resulted in overwhelmingly negative health and social consequences...a full policy reorientation is needed." - have lent the general cause a blanket aura of respectability.

But even as preparations were under way for yesterday's Valletta's march, the local police stepped up their own 'war on cannabis' by arraigning two men over a drug bust that had originally taken place a full two years earlier, in 2009.

Both suspects were originally arrested in connection with the discovery of 4.5kg of cannabis resin two years ago. However, it was only last Thursday - significantly, two days before Saturday's planned protest - that the police decided to charge the two men in court. This marks the latest of several indications that - Global Commission or no Global Commission - local law enforcement authorities have no intention of softening their own notoriously strict drug policy.

Not even recent calls for a radical policy rethink by (among others) the Maltese government's own drug agency, Sedqa, seem to have dented their resolve.

Up in smoke

In line with a growing consensus that criminalization has generally failed as a policy - a view shared also by Britain's anti-drug agency (though this too was ignored by the UK government) - Sedqa's clinical director Dr George Grech recently reiterated a call, originally made in 2010, for a national debate on decriminalization during a conference hosted by the agency.

"Prison is not giving results - it's no secret there are drugs in prison, and we have come to learn that incarceration does not work in people who are purely drug addicts," Dr Grech had said on that occasion.

"When I made the point last December, I was referring to simple possession cases, not trafficking. I pointed towards the example of Portugal, where all drugs, including heroin and cocaine, were decriminalised. There had been a decrease in drug use as a result."

However, Grech admits that there have been a few developments since then on the local and international front. "For one thing we now know more about cannabis, in that there has been research linking the drug to psychosis. It is not true, therefore, to suggest that it is entirely harmless."

The other major development concerns a major shift in the illegal drug landscape, whereby cocaine now emerges as the number one problem drug on the market.

"In the past year we have seen a steep increase in reported cocaine use. Even people we were treating for heroin addiction are crossing over to cocaine. Unfortunately, cocaine is still being perceived as a 'recreational' and therefore harmless drug, notwithstanding serious physical and psychological side effects."

"Again, I am talking about users, not traffickers. In our experience sending such people to prison is counterproductive. For one thing it doesn't help the user, and for another, we know there is a drug problem in prison also."

Instead, Grech recommends a treatment programme instead of prison for such offences. "Not necessarily rehab; treatment could also take the form of outpatient therapy."

But judging by the increase in marijuana-related arrests, arraignments and imprisonments since then, it seems that Dr Grech's advice has meanwhile gone up in smoke.

Go to jail...

Perhaps the most iconic recent case of imprisonment on marijuana charges was that of British national Daniel Holmes, sentenced to 11 years imprisonment and fined €23,000 over cultivation of more than one kilogram worth of cannabis sativa - though the precise amount is disputed, as it refers to the total dry weight of the plant itself, and not the final product. 

Holmes, who claimed a lifelong cannabis addiction, said that he had cultivated the drug for his personal use, and - while denying any intention to traffic - pleaded guilty to simple possession. His sentence sparked outrage on a number of counts, not least the perceived inconsistency whereby more severe sentences are meted out for relatively trivial offences, while much more serious crimes - including domestic violence, grievous bodily harm arising from criminal negligence, and even aggravated theft - are often let off lightly, sometimes with a suspended sentence.

Soon after the court ruling, an online petition entitled 'Daniel Holmes does not deserve 10 years for growing weed' attracted almost 1,000 signatures within a few days.

The incident, which has been separately criticised by the Opposition spokesman for Justice, has also rekindled calls for decriminalization from professionals active in Malta's own national anti-drug addiction agency.

Reacting to the Holmes case, the Labour Party's spokesman for Justice Dr Jose Herrera suggested downgrading cannabis as a 'less harmful' drug. "I feel that whilst certain hard drugs such as heroin, cocaine and ecstasy should remain scheduled as they are today, I felt that cannabis, together with other lesser drugs such as 'khat', should be scheduled differently since they are more or less harmless," he told MaltaToday.

"I must also state that Malta does not seem to be in line with the United Nations Convention against illicit traffic in narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances 1988, even though Malta ratified this Convention in 1996.

He added that, although it is standard government practice to amend the local laws before ratifying any convention in Parliament "for obvious reasons", there seems to be "a great discrepancy between this convention and our laws".

Nor is this the only aspect of our legal system which appears contradictory. Referring specifically to the Holmes case, Herrera admitted that "there does not seem to be enough consistency in the judgments being meted out in this regard".

"I myself lately had a case regarding the aggravated possession of three grams of cannabis. Notwithstanding a plea bargaining note entered into the acts of the case, recommending a one-year sentence, the court condemned my client to three-and-a half-years imprisonment. While I do agree that it is necessary in our country to have harsh laws regarding drug trafficking in order to act as a deterrent, I definitely do not believe in witch-hunts. At times, yes, certain judgments dealing with the possession of light drugs seem disproportionate to other judgments dealing with what might appear to be more heinous crimes."