The Labour Party believes drug decriminalisation is “not a solution”, despite a high-profile international report indicating the opposite.
“Labour believes we should strengthen the methods used for prevention and fighting abuse,” a party spokesman said.
The party’s sentiment seems to be in line with that of the Justice Ministry, which, last week, said it had no intention of “decriminalising or liberalising Malta’s drug laws”.
A government spokesman said: “The basic fact is that drugs are illegal because they are harmful and we are still to be persuaded that giving a free hand to people to possess and consume dangerous substances without having an effective deterrent in place will solve this problem.”
A high-profile international group of experts, including former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the former leaders of Mexico, Colombia and Brazil, and entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, last week presented a report saying the war on drug had “failed”.
The Global Commission on Drug Policy also said jailing addicts was not solving anything but filled up prisons around the globe and broke up families.
The report encouraged governments to “experiment” with drug decriminalisation of substances like cannabis “to undermine the power of organised crime and safeguard users’ health”.
Decriminalisation would shift drug users from the criminal system to the health system where they could be treated as patients in need of therapy rather than as criminals, the report said.
George Grech, the clinical director of the government agency Sedqa, is also in favour of drug decriminalisation. He had raised the need to urgently discuss it during a conference last December.
Reacting to the report, Dr Grech, however, disapproved of legalisation saying that would be justifying something that remained intrinsically wrong.
A non-scientific survey in the form of an opinion poll on timesofmalta.com was answered by 3,800 people. While 48 per cent of respondents were against decriminalisation, 42 per cent said they were in favour and seven per cent said they would be in favour only after a proper study.
See also:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110603/local/Decriminalise-drugs-No-way-says-government-in-wake-of-global-report.368700