Rehabilitation, no matter what

This year the city of Vilnius in Lithuania hosted the 13th mayors' conference concerning ECAD where Pembroke mayor Joseph Zammit and myself were the main speakers on the main theme "Combating drugs - global challenge".

Drug usage is a global problem that could be solved only by the joint efforts of specialists and experts from all over the world. People from 140 countries attended the event; although politics make strange bedfellows as the old saying goes, addiction makes addicts one of a kind.

The drug addict's personal story may vary but, in the end, they all have the same thing in common: addiction. The addict knows well the two things that make up true addiction: obsession and compulsion.

Obsession: that fixed idea that takes them back time and time again to their particular drug or some substitute to recapture the ease and comfort they once knew. Compulsion: once having started the process with one fix, one pill or one drink they cannot stop through their own willpower. Because of their physical sensitivity to drugs, they are completely in the grip of a destructive power greater than themselves.

My speech at the ECAD conference was about rehabilitating all addicts whether of their own free will or not. Just like mental patients, they are are a threat to themselves, their families and society in general. There should be no distinction between soft drugs and hard drugs. The monotonous, imitative, ritualistic, compulsive and obsessive routines of active addiction make them incapable of responsive and meaningful thought and action.

Their addiction brings suffering to themselves, the people who love them and the people they steal from and maim for the use of drugs. I cannot see any other option to lessen the death toll but the rehabilitation of addicts, with or without their consent.

If the addict, once cured, still insists on using drugs then his place should be back in rehabilitation. They should be given no choice. Just think: no grief from desolated parents over a beloved's death from an overdose, no crimes taking place and drug traffickers can go hang themselves.

I must thank Arturas Zuokas, the mayor of Vilnius, for his hospitality.