The increase in the number of women using drugs over the past three years was alarming, sedqa’s clinical director George Grech said this morning.
Dr Grech was speaking during a business breakfast on victims of addiction and former prisoners, organised by the Education Ministry and the Foundation for Social Welfare as part of the activities in the European Year for Combatting Poverty and Social Exclusion, said that.
He said that while the ratio of female drug users was two women for every eight men, three years ago, it was now four women for every six men.
Dr Grech said that between January and June this year there were 44 new users who approached sedqa, the agency against drug and alcohol abuse. Thirty-four were men, 10 were women.
The agency’s known clients numbered 822 men and173 women.
What is worrying, he said, was that women had other certain problems unique problems, including prostitution, sexual abuse and domestic violence.
Another alarming figure was that it seemed drug users in Malta were the parents of some 900 children. Unfortunately, there were not enough human resources to tackle these children to ensure they did not fall into the same pitfalls as their parents.
Dr Grech said that every year, there were between 10 and 12 fatal overdoses. Most happened when a user was just out of prison or a rehabilitation programme.
George Busuttil, secretary general of Mid-Dlam ghad-Dawl, a prisoner support organisation, sec spoke about the need to help inmates at the beginning of their cases and not at the end. This would enable them to have a tailored care problem.
He pointed out that there were certain injustices that contributed towards socially excluding prisoners.
Giving an example, he said that when someone over 61 was jailed, they lost their right to a pension, irrelevant of how long they would have paid national insurance. This was legal theft.
Another issue was that when someone was jailed for more than 12 months one lost his right to vote.
These were matters which were contributing to social exclusion.