Daniel Holmes has become something of a cause célèbre for lobbyists who want archaic drug laws to be relaxed.

The Briton, a father of one child, was jailed for 10 years and fined €23,000 in November 2011 for growing cannabis at his Gozo apartment.

Earlier this month, at his appeal hearing, Mr Holmes’s lawyer argued that the prison term meted out by the courts was excessive given the marijuana was for personal use.

Judgment will be handed down in October, but as Mr Holmes awaits his fate, the drug decriminalisation debate continues. The most recent person to enter the fray is former European Court of Human Rights judge Giovanni Bonello, who heads the Commission for Justice Reform.

When receiving Alternattiva Demokratika’s proposals to have a more humane drug policy last week, Dr Bonello said personal drug use should be treated as a social problem and not a crime.

It should be easy to identify who the millionaire drug pushers and the addicts are

Lawyer Joe Giglio says any such a change would mean drug users will no longer have to be arrested, interrogated and hauled to court by the police.

Decriminalising drugs could render drug possession for personal use a misdemeanour equivalent to illegal parking, he says.

However, it all depends on what type of law, if any, legislators will enact. Criminal penalties for drug users were eliminated in Portugal 12 years ago and those caught with small amounts of marijuana, cocaine or heroin are not indicted.

Legislators have always been coy on relaxing drug laws, fearing an electoral backlash.

Commenting last month on the Bonello Commission’s proposal to decriminalise first-time drug possession by having such cases dealt with by a specialised board rather than the courts, Justice Parliamentary Secretary Owen Bonnici told Times of Malta this was “definitely” something the Government “must consider”.

Whether drug decriminalisation will happen in this legislature still has to be seen but people who have worked with drug addicts have no qualms about its benefits.

Charles Miceli, who retired after 22 years at the helm of the prison inmates programme run by Caritas, a Church organisation, believes criminalising drug use creates more problems than it solves.

“Addiction is a disorder and people should not be criminalised but treated socially and medically,” he argues.

When drug addicts end up in prison they are stigmatised, he adds, and as a consequence they enter a spiral of dejection, disappointment, poverty and criminality.

“They may not find work after coming out of prison, and although Caritas has always been against decriminalisation, experience has shown me that addicts who are imprisoned almost invariably return behind bars,” Mr Miceli says.

He also draws a distinction between traffickers intent on making millions from the drug trade and addicts, who sell part of their daily dose to finance their habit.

Addiction is a disorder and people should not be criminalised

“There is a difference between the two but it should be easy to identify who the millionaire drug pushers and the addicts are,” he says.

It is a sentiment shared by Fr Hilary Tagliaferro, who has campaigned for drug laws to be less severe when dealing with reformed addicts, who are hauled to court years after committing an offence.

“I do not agree that people caught for the first time in possession of drugs, whatever drugs they may be, should be sent to prison. The place is not a place of rehabilitation for now and I prefer to keep drug users outside prison and within a rehabilitation programme,” he says.

He insists drug traffickers should not be left outside to harm society but argues that too many people are in prison on possession-related charges.

“I have witnessed a change for the better in the attitude to­wards drug addicts adopted by the courts over the past few years but it still depends on who the magistrate is,” he says.

The Augustinian priest acknowledges that decriminalisation runs the risk of sending the wrong message to young people but insists that sending addicts to prison was a worse predicament. “With the law as it is, drug users still do not fear being caught,” he says, adding that drug use has increased.

Lawyer Philip Manduca insists that concerns over the impact of drug decriminalisation on young people’s attitudes should be no different from those on alcohol abuse.

“I understand that every parent worries that their children may become drug addicts but it is the same as worrying about your children becoming alcoholics,” he says.

Some drug users become addicts and need social and medical help just like people who become alcoholics or compulsive gamblers, he adds.

“But there are others who use drugs for recreational purposes and do not need help,” he says.

Dr Manduca disagrees that anyone should be put in prison for using drugs of any type.

Although decriminalisation is “a good step forward”, he adds, it will not solve the problem of addiction and will still keep drug users in touch with the criminal world – decriminalisation does not mean that drugs can be sold legally.

ksansone@timesofmalta.com

The situation today

Somebody caught with drugs for personal use can potentially face a one-year prison term and a fine, according to lawyer Joe Giglio.

However, unlike the situation a couple of years ago, the sentence is left to the magistrate’s discretion.

The change came about in the 1990s after the case of a 16-year-old Swiss student, Gisela Feuz, who was imprisoned over less than one gram of cannabis. At the time, the prison term was mandatory.

Daniel Holmes was sentenced to more than a year because he was also charged with trafficking, and this offence carries a heftier penalty.

But despite the potential prison term, Dr Giglio says the courts have “as a general rule” put first-time offenders on probation or handed down a conditional discharge.

The probation order puts the drug user under the care of a probation officer for a minimum of one year and a maximum of three years. A conditional discharge means the person is discharged of the offence on condition that he does not commit another crime within a set period.

Dr Giglio says decriminalisation will remove drug use from the criminal realm, and depending on the finer details of the law it could be reduced to the level of a traffic offence dealt with at local council level.