Very rarely is there a campaign in Malta on behalf of a prisoner who is serving a long stretch in jail. Once there, inmates are often forgotten until it is time for them to be released. Daniel Holmes is proving to be an exception.

This is largely down to his parents, from Wales, and his wife, who have launched a tireless campaign for a reduction in the Briton’s prison sentence. Not only have they gone to their local newspaper, but also managed to enlist the support of Joseph Calleja after Mr Holmes’s mother appealed for the tenor’s help on Facebook. Mr Calleja said that while he in no way condoned the use of illegal substances, he hoped that “good sense and true justice” would prevail.

Mr Holmes was jailed for 10 years and fined €23,000 in November 2011 for growing five cannabis plants at his Gozo apartment. His appeal is to be heard at the end of this month.

First things first: he broke the law. There is no getting away from that. Anyone who is in Malta knows, or ought to know, that for many years the country has taken drugs extremely seriously. Some people would argue that if people want to avoid lengthy prison sentences they should respect the law. On the face of it, they are right.

But while any comparisons with a Midnight Express scenario are distorted and unfair, it is too simplistic to leave the matter there. The issue of drugs, and how we as a society in Malta deal with them, is a multi-faceted one that needs to be probed deeply if we are ever to have any positive results.

A point on which there is universal agreement is that drug policies over the years have failed dismally. Strict laws do not stop people taking drugs. Over the years the opposite has been the case, as the number of drug users has risen. Drugs have become more socially unacceptable and are widely available. Meanwhile, the criminal gangs who make money out of this business have continued to flourish.

Our perspective of drug users is also changing. Whereas before they were seen as society’s outcasts doing some evil act, more and more people are realising that their sons and daughters could be the ones using drugs. And that when it becomes a problem, they need help.

The last place a drug user can find assistance is in prison. Quite the contrary, prison is a drugs hotbed where an individual’s problem can only get worse, not to mention the stigma attached. These people may have broken the law, but they are not criminals as we normally define them.

However, though the judge hearing Mr Holmes’s appeal has discretion in sentencing, which everyone hopes he exercises in this very sad case, he can only act according to the law in front of him. He did not put that there. Our politicians did. And it is our politicians who need to have the common sense and courage to put this matter right.

What the best solution is – short of persuading people to stop taking all drugs, which is clearly unattainable – remains elusive. But when people of the standing of Mgr Victor Grech and Giovanni Bonello have called on politicians to stop treating drug users as criminals, the very least our parliamentarians can do is tackle the issue.

This problem will not go away. More drug users will be caught. There will be more, like Mr Holmes, who will be sent to prison under our current law. We cannot go on like this. The law on drugs, or our approach to it, must change immediately.