Let’ face it, the proposed cannabis reform is nothing short of normalising drug use. The reform will permit the use of cannabis, users will be allowed to carry up to seven grams of the drug and it will be permissible to grow up to four cannabis plants at home.
Oh, and how will parents explain to their children why they are crushing and processing leaves from one of the cannabis plants growing in the internal yard?
Are we really confident that all politicians are comfortable with this, even those on the government side?
I concur with Nationalist MP Claudio Grech’s comments as reported in MaltaToday: “The law sets the permissible age for cannabis use at 18 when specialists suggest this should be 25; the law sets no limits on THC [the psycho-active substance in cannabis] and the threshold for possession has been increased by 800 per cent... these are radical changes and government has not produced studies to justify why they are necessary,”.
Recently, Prime Minister Robert Abela inaugurated a drug therapeutic centre, which his father, former president George Abela, who sits on the Caritas board, worked so hard to set up. This project is intended to support young people who are struggling with drug addiction.
The irony is that Caritas accepted to be played by the government strategists and participate in this inauguration at the same time when so many people, parents in particular, and over 20 Church organisations (including Caritas) are calling out for a rethink of this reform. During the event, the prime minister was quoted as saying: “In Caritas, we have a partner that helps us reach this aim, although we might have different opinions.”
This is where Abela is getting it fundamentally wrong. This is not about ‘opinions’. This is about data, facts and empirical research and, until we have that, we should wait before legislating into the unknown. As a starter, we should listen to Caritas when it says that most drug addicts speak about their first encounter with drugs as being cannabis.
During a Xarabank online interview, the respectable Mgr Victor Grech “cautioned that cannabis could be a gateway drug in certain circumstances”.
Last week, a colleague told me: “Andrew, introducing cannabis in this way will ruin us. Our son has struggled, together with all of the family, to come clean and the government is adding fuel to the fire”.
By no stretch of the imagination can we say that the cannabis debate has been exhausted – on that we should at least agree. We have had no opinions on this matter from the head of public health or from the Health and Safety Authority and most MPs have no idea what the legislation is about.
The pro-cannabis lobby has blinded the government, putting what’s ethical and moral out of the equation- Andrew Azzopardi
That we chose to legislate when so many experts and NGOs are still uneasy about this matter is preposterous. Such an issue requires national consensus. There are political parties, unions, professional associations, academics and a whole host of people who still are oblivious to how this is going to impact us.
We lack data and we are still not sure how the legal changes will affect our communities.
Our craze to score brownie points and sound ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’ have turned our politics into short-sighted governance.
The drive we have to appease our voting base, instead of looking at doing the right thing, is simply incredible in this country. The pro-cannabis lobby and those who have a commercial interest in this issue have somehow blinded the government, putting what’s ethical and moral out of the equation.
The estimated 40,000 cannabis consumers seem to be the only priority for the government instead of looking at how this decision will impact children, youths, employees, the police and unborn children.
The argument that is being touted, that of ending the black market, is senseless. Instead of tackling the illegality of this issue, of using our forces to halt this ‘pandemic’ of drug trafficking, we admit failure and so we decide to legalise it – smart indeed!
As if legalising any illegal substance will really weaken the black market. With that argument, we should be legalising cocaine and heroin and all other illegal substances.
This is not about conservatives or liberals. This is not about the cliché that “we have been waiting for too long”. This is not about scoring a vote of thanks.
This should be about our communities, about doing what is right, about basing this decision on empirical data. This is about finding consensus.