The island’s €5.5 million annual drug enforcement budget was mostly resulting in small-time drug busts. Photo: Shutterstock

Two-thirds of people arrested in drug-related cases in Malta are caught in possession of small amounts, according to an EU study.

Sixty-three per cent of the 407 held in 2012 – the last year under review – were found in simple possession.

The figures form part of a detailed profile of the country’s drug policies published this week by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction.

This showed that the island’s €5.5 million annual drug enforcement budget was mostly resulting in small-time drug busts. In fact, just 37 per cent of arrests were related to trafficking crimes.

Arrests based on possession for personal use, however, could soon become a thing of the past. Justice Minister Owen Bonnici is expected to table a drug reform White Paper in the coming weeks, which aims to rewrite the country’s legal stance on personal drug use.

Although details of the mechanics of the reform are still preliminary, it is expected to result in the introduction of much looser penalties for first-time offenders.

While no official quantification system exists to outline what amount is classified as simple possession for personal use, the discretion used by the judiciary is based on a log of previous cases in a referential case law system.

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat went a step further than Dr Bonnici last month when he announced the government’s intention to move towards a decriminalisation policy.

“The system of sending people to prison for drug possession is failing our youths,” he had said, adding that the government would be moving towards decriminalisation after having cham-pioned the civil unions law.

The high proportion of drug- using suspects was also reflected in prison drug use figures, according to the EMCDDA report.

Some 40 per cent of inmates tested positive for drugs in 2010. Of the 731 individuals held at Corradino Correctional Facility, 299 tested positive for opiates – heroin and morphine, among others – cocaine, cannabis or a mix of two or all drug types. The figure was 25 per cent higher than the number who tested positive on admission to the facility.

None of the users tested positive for HIV, the lowest rate in Europe

The report also provided an insight into drug rehabilitation centres. Three-quarters of the 1,874 receiving treatment in 2012 were opiate users, more than a fifth of whom were under the age of 25, and 82 per cent were male. None of the users tested positive for HIV, the lowest rate in Europe. Forty per cent, however, had hepatitis C. More than half of the clients at drug rehabilitation centres were parents to one child and five per cent had more than three children.

The number of drug-induced deaths, at 17 people per million citizens, compared well with the EU average.

Drug use was also witnessed among pregnant mothers – 15 drug-abusing women who were expecting a baby attended the Substance Misuse Outpatient Unit in 2010, the latest year on record.

Two of them had miscarriages and 11 of the infants had withdrawal symptoms.