Caritas director Anthony Gatt stopped short of saying ‘We told you so’ as he described an increasingly worrying drug situation in Malta on Thursday.

“We are seeing a reality that is a crying shame, and much of it stems from a lack of law enforcement,” Gatt said as he referred to the legalisation of recreational cannabis in December 2021.

Speaking during the graduation of former addicts who have just completed a drug rehabilitation programme at San Blas therapeutic centre, Gatt explained that in terms of the law, no one could smoke cannabis in public or near children and one could not have more than four cannabis plants at home.

Yet Caritas was increasingly receiving calls from concerned parents as cannabis smoke wafted into their apartments from neighbours smoking downstairs, or teachers not knowing what to do as schoolchildren faced problems caused by their parents.

“We used to warn that the enactment of the new law would convey the wrong message... that we would have an enforcement problem.... that youths at risk would transit faster to cocaine... that cannabis would be seen as nothing major... that admissions to  Mater Dei and Mount Carmel would increase…Some told us we were scaremongering,” Gatt recalled.

“We know what happened for cigarettes, and we are seeing the same thing with cannabis. While tobacco could cause cancer, cannabis was a danger for mental health, he said.

Since October last year, Caritas, along with the Oasi Foundation and the University had been pushing the authorities to ban the sale of synthetic cannabis products known as HHC from grocers, corner shops and stationers. Yet now one could even go on Maltese websites to buy Gummy MDMA and Gummy speed, Gatt said. A sample had been sent to a laboratory for testing and it had revealed traces of MDMA (Ecstasy), Ketamine and Amphetamine.

“This is a dark moment,” Gatt said, although he believed matters could be resolved with proper law enforcement.

He believed, he said, that the Cannabis regulatory authority was serious in the way it authorised the opening of social clubs, but it was worrying that an information campaign by the same authority to inform the public where cannabis could be consumed said nothing about cannabis being dangerous.

'Truly serious' cocaine situation

And, he added the situation regarding Cocaine was ‘truly serious’.

56% of the 808 persons who sought help for drug addiction from Caritas last year were addicted to cocaine and crack cocaine. And this was also the first time that more people sought help because of cannabis (21%) than from heroin (17%).

“We never saw those figures before,” Gatt said.

He said that many addicts sought shelter at Mt Carmel Hospital. They often wanted to kick their addiction but couldn’t, and viewed Mt Carmel as an emergency shelter. They were sometimes stuck there for months until a rehabilitation programme was drawn up for them.

Then there was another cohort of people who were not yet ready for a rehabilitation programme and kept going in and out of Mt Carmel, drifting from one emergency to another and viewing Mt Carmel as a homeless shelter. There was a gap for a ‘low threshold residence’ for such people so that they would not end up in the streets, becoming a danger for themselves and others, Gatt said.

NGOs cannot afford social workers

The Caritas director earlier also pointed to a financial and personnel problem facing NGOs.

He said he was very pleased that social workers at the government’s Foundation for Social Welfare were recently given a pay rise, an incentive to encourage more people to join the profession. But this had created a new challenge for NGOs, which could not afford the same salaries to engage these much-needed professionals.

While NGOs did what they could through fund-raising activities, they risked losing good people unless government assistance increased. That, in turn, meant they could not continue to provide the services which the community needed, he warned.

Funds were also needed to ensure that facilities were kept in good order. Over the past years, Caritas had refurbished two blocks at San Blas and installed air conditioners. It now needed to refurbish the kitchen block at San Blas and fund the Prison Inmates Programme and the Female Programme at a total cost of €1.5 million. Only €200,000 had been raised so far.

In 2023 alone, he said, Caritas saw 808 people who sought its help because of drugs, of whom 257 were admitted to residential programmes. 515 relatives of these drug addicts were also helped.

Caritas also assisted 686 other people in counselling and general social work. Meeting were held for 3,382 schoolchildren and 451 workers.

Collaboration with the Family Ministry and the Alfred Mizzi Foundation last year translated in emergency shelter being provided to 402 people. 1028 vulnerable people were fed at Dar Papa Frangisku.

The Caritas director thanked the Family Ministry for funding most of the rehabilitation programmes for adults and the Home Affairs Ministry for providing funds for the Prison Inmates Programme. He also thanked public and corporate donors for their generosity.