Cocaine abusers should be aware of the latest trend in Naples, where traffickers are mixing heroin with cocaine to get people hooked on heroin, George Grech, clinical director of the government's anti-substance abuse agency Sedqa, has warned.
And cannabis users, who may have believed that use of the drug was harmless, should change their minds after research in the UK has shown that the substance is as dangerous as any other drug, he said.
Cocaine is a recreational drug, usually consumed only on weekends and at parties, and is not as addictive as heroin. But pushers are mixing it with heroin - dubbing it a "snowball" - to get even casual users hooked on heroin, Dr Grech said.
Police sources said cocaine use in Europe has increased immensely and seizures by the police here show that Malta is following the European trend. Whereas only 1.3 kilos of cocaine were seized in 1999, the police have been seizing between four to six kilogrammes every year since then, the sources said.
There have also been significant increases in seizures of cannabis. While only four-and-a-half kilogrammes were seized in 2001, close to 59 kilogrammes were seized in 2003, 34 kilogrammes in 2004, 21 kilogrammes in 2005 and almost 48 kilogrammes in last year.
Dr Grech said: "The latest research from the UK has shown that the use of cannabis is more detrimental to the brain than previously thought."
He cited a recent article entitled Cannabis: An Apology, carried in The Independent, one of Britain's leading newspapers and which had campaigned for the decriminalisation of the drug.
The Independent stated: "In 1997, this newspaper launched a campaign to decriminalise the drug. If only we had known then what we can reveal today. Record numbers of teenagers are requiring drug treatment as a result of smoking skunk, the highly potent cannabis strain that is 25 times stronger than resin sold a decade ago."
Police sources have confirmed that the strain of cannabis The Independent spoke of is often encountered in Malta, usually imported from Holland.
Dr Grech said research in the UK showed that last year more than 22,000 people were treated for cannabis addiction and almost half of those affected were under 18. The number of young people in treatment almost doubled from about 5,000 in 2005 to almost 10,000 last year. Another 13,000 adults also needed treatment.
Research published in the Lancet, the world's leading independent medical journal, shows that cannabis is more dangerous than LSD and ecstasy. The Independent said Prof. Colin Blakemore, CEO of the UK's Medical Research Council, who backed the paper's original campaign for cannabis to be decriminalised, has also changed his mind. "The link between cannabis and psychosis is quite clear now; it wasn't 10 years ago," Prof. Blakemore told The Independent.
Robin Murray, professor of psychiatry at London's Institute of Psychiatry, estimates that at least 25,000 of the 250,000 schizophrenics in the UK could have avoided the illness if they had not used cannabis.
Anton Grech, a Maltese psychiatrist who worked with Prof. Murray on his research, said the number of schizophrenics in Malta who abused cannabis was relatively larger than in other countries because many used cannabis as "self-treatment".
"Not all cannabis users suffer from schizophrenia. But the use of cannabis increases the chance of developing schizophrenia," he said.
"About one per cent of the population suffers from schizophrenia. Schizophrenia can be genetically inherited but, while one has it in his genes, it may never develop. Abuse of cannabis can precipitate its development. We have seen people in hospital who feel better when they stop using cannabis."