It's time to adopt a cruel-to-be-kind approach with drug addicts

The following is my contribution to Ecad (European Cities against Drugs) which Malta has been a member of since the late 1990s, during a conference held in Stockholm, Sweden commemorating 100 years of drug prevention:

A whole century. One hundred years of trying to curb the abuse of drugs. More than a lifetime of drug prevention which started in Shanghai in 1909 but quite frankly, even with the strong force of Ecad, have drugs, or rather the abuse of them, decreased? In Malta, it's a definite "No" and judging by the looks of things it's a definite "No" all over the world.

The reality is that there are even more drugs now than there were in 1909. Where have we failed as parents? As societies in general? As a nation or worldwide? Who is to blame if drugs still plague our young and sometimes even adults? True, there is no simple answer but I fervently believe there is someone to blame. Why do politicians shy away from really fighting drug abuse? Are they afraid of losing votes from drug addicts and drug traffickers? Have they grown so numerous that they've become the means to win or lose an election? Why aren't they enacting new laws to prevent the addict from using drugs? Is it because most of our politicians are in a terminal slumber and they can't see what's happening before their very eyes.

Why should drug addicts be allowed to drive when they are a danger to themselves and to others? Why should a young mother who is a drug addict be allowed to keep her children when she does not give a hoot about taking care of herself let alone her offspring?

Why are kids on methadone allowed to work when methadone is by itself, an addictive drug?

Have we reached a point where because we love those addicts, it's time we became cruel to be kind? If the drug problem has become a major problem all over the world, isn't it about time we meted out punishment to these addicts as one would to a toddler in the hope of him learning his lesson?

Drug traffickers are the scum of the earth dealing death around the clock. They're even killing little kids now for profit, selling crack and coke at the school gates, getting 12 and 13-year-olds hooked on dope. Do politicians play an important role in all this? You bet they do. We are witness to a shanty world filled with coke and crackheads and heroin addicts pumping poison into their veins, broken down specimens of humanity who'll mug, rob or kill just to get a fix while our hoity-toity parliamentarians who get rich quick on our taxes keep gaping as our children are dying one by one.

They have the power to keep drugs at bay but all they do is talk nonsense while drug addicts are being swallowed in a "jaws" drug pit. I thank God for Ecad. I thank God for a loving, caring amount of people from all over the world, for Ecad in itself is a very powerful source. Without a government though, a government and its politicians on our side combating drugs, combating drugs is a difficult task indeed.

I rest my case.