Whoever drafted the new drugs law that came into effect last week must have been a keen Monopoly player.
Under this law, smoking pot will still be illegal but you don't go to jail. Instead, you get a get-out-of-jail free card, courtesy of Justice Minister Owen Bonnici, although the police will still arrest you and can keep you locked up for a cool 48 hours, so you recover your memory and remember where you got the drug from.
If you lapse again, you don't go to jail either, you don't pass Go, but you get to pay €200 instead. That's equivalent to the fine you'd pay if you get caught smoking a cigarette inside a bar. Which makes you wonder: do you get to pay twice €200 if you get caught smoking a joint in a bar?
The much-vaunted drugs law, Labour's way of pandering to latter-day liberals who think that freedom has something to with blowing your mind while tripping in Gozo, is perversely pathetic. It is primarily a sham but also very irresponsible.
Thankfully, the police have put a stop to Labour's original plan where, anyone caught with marijuana for personal use, would get something resembling a traffic ticket by a friendly policeman.
Considering that the current Police Commissioner was a former head of the drug squad, there was little chance that Labour would have gotten away with its original plan to 'legalise it' without having to find someone to fill the post of police chief for a fourth time in two years.
The police need to interrogate those caught with drugs because that is a main source of intelligence.
All caught up in its own hypocritical rhetoric of wanting to stop our poor innocent youths from ending up in jail for smoking pot, Labour has now had to sugar-coat the facts of life to its gullible electorate.
Arrangements have been made for those liberal-minded airheads who fell for Labour's spin and still think they have a right to blow their minds without getting arrested.
The government has assured that drug abusers don't have to answer questions at police HQ and that failure to cooperate would not result in prejudicing their case. That must be very helpful for the police.
Arrested drug abusers will be referred to a drugs tribunal, where they will be 'expected to dress smart' and the police would be there in plain clothes. It would be 'more of a chat' than a court hearing, one former rehabilitation officer has assured us. Let's hope they don't serve coffee because that too can be addictive.
The purpose of all of this is to show that the drug abuser has found 'a sympathetic ear'. If caught a second time, there's the €200 fine and more sympathy from liberal Labour, no doubt.
This comedy of errors is what is so repulsive and irresponsible about Labour: its so-called sympathetic ear. This is the nanny state par excellence, where responsibility is taken away from the individual and power centred in the hands of a Labour state.
The Commissioner of Police may now start expecting phone calls from government ministers or their aides interceding on behalf of some drug abuser locked up at his depot and asking that the interrogating police officers express even more sympathy by showing him the door.
The Labour Party will resemble a shrivelled Egyptian mummy when Joseph Muscat eventually bows out
This is what happens when you centralise power and make things vague and subjective. This is what happens when you take away responsibility from individuals and not let them answer for their actions. This undermines our already fractured society and does not help drug abusers. It just makes them bolder until it is far too late to help them.
Labour knows all about lending a sympathetic ear, that it is why it is in power today. Its populist policies, its appeasement of lobby groups and its regular rewarding of lawbreakers through amnesties are undermining any remaining vestiges of personal social responsibility. Labour is leading this country on the road to environmental, social and, eventually, economic ruin in the name of liberalism.
The recent local election results brought a slight glimmer of hope. Joseph Muscat's recycled antics, his eve-of-election freebies, the constant announcement of mega projects that don't get off the ground, have started to lose their shine. As the PN leader aptly put it: he is no longer invincible. The spell has been broken.
You simply cannot promise everything to everyone. The way Muscat swung from pro-hunting rhetoric to anti-hunting rhetoric within 24 hours of the referendum result shows what an impossible game he is trying to play and how his unprincipled past, where Labour sold its soul to anyone willing to pay with his vote, is slowly catching up with him.
Our environment is paying the price for Muscat's double games, although the biggest loser will be the Labour Party that will resemble a shrivelled Egyptian mummy, drained of its soul, when Muscat eventually bows out.
The clear cultural divide in this country that emerged from the spring hunting referendum shows that, for all Muscat's rhetoric of wanting to create a new middle class, the reality is still the same. The divide between Nationalists and Labour is geographical, cultural, educational and class-based. There is nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is to ignore it.
PN leader Simon Busuttil initially disappointed many Nationalists who, in their vast majority, ignored his example and voted with their minds against spring hunting. But the local election results show Busuttil is on the right track.
Labour supporters were not disappointed by their leader's stance on spring hunting. They did not vote with their mind but they still disappointed Muscat at the referendum and the council elections. It may be midterm blues, but some blues do not go away.
Hunters caught shooting the wrong sort of bird are being paraded like on show trials just to please a middle class environmental lobby that Muscat now fears losing. The double act is becoming increasingly difficult to play.
And, most of all, as the council election results show, there is clear unrest in Labour's rank and file because, for all Muscat's boasting, this is not the socialist party they once knew and they do not share much of that strong economic growth the government boasts so much of.
Labour's working class hardcore voter benefits mainly from government handouts, like energy bill cuts from a power station that remains to be built and ministerial patronage through the so-called customer care service.
Muscat conceded the restlessness in Labour's ranks when he said in his post-election analysis that he understands that some people stayed away from the polls or voted against his party because they are still waiting for justice to be done with them personally. We all know what 'personally' translates into – cronyism.
The only exception to the long-standing cultural divide is Gozo, which has been treated by successive governments of both shades as the poor underdog, always in need of that extra leg up, like it was still a crown colony.
Labour patronage policy and its aggressive campaign on the sister island has reaped the party results.
Gozo has tilted the vote in favour of spring hunting and bucked the anti-Labour trend in local elections.
The nanny state still works wonders in Gozo, to the extent that it makes you want to consider giving the island a break until it learns to pull its own weight. But, on second thoughts, there is another way.
We should not pass Gozo come the summer season but continue to go there in droves and hide our marijuana joints as best we can.
Only this time around, we make sure to ask for a receipt everywhere we go. It's called asking people to shoulder responsibility and it is not just fiscal.