People caught with small quantities of illegal drugs for personal use NEVER WERE sent to prison

Published: November 24, 2014 at 4:10pm

insanely irresponsible

You get sent to prison for dealing, not for using. Or for stealing to fund your habit, in which case the crime is the theft and not the drug use itself. This has always been the case.

Yesterday the government enlisted the help of a couple of people at The Sunday Times to break the Chinese bridge story on the front page. It didn’t distract us from the subject of Manuel Mallia and his Glock-toting driver.

So today it’s plan B: decriminalising the possession of small amounts of illegal drugs for personal use, while lying about how people in these situations are sent to prison when they most definitely are not.

All it means is that it won’t go on your police record, but it rarely does for first-time offenders and teenagers anyway.

In any case, that’s not the point. The point here is that the Justice Minister is lying and the secondary point is that this is yet another vain attempt to take the heat off Manuel Mallia.




12 Comments Comment

  1. Mim says:

    Has an investigation into the workings of the Department of Information been launched? If not, why not?

    There is clearly something wrong with the way it receives, vets and publishes information. It got it wrong on so many counts in the Sheehan shooting case that there must be a problem with the chain of comand AND the accountability/motives of its sources.

    Scarcity of information is quite distinct from changing of damning facts. The DOI should be neither a propoganda machine nor a whitewashing one.

    It should certainly not smoke-screen crime.

  2. Jozef says:

    http://maltarightnow.com/news/2014/11/24/il-ministru-george-vella-ma-jiddefendix-lill-ministru-manuel-mallia/

    How does one get the PN to understand a motion of no confidence in Mallia is all it takes?

  3. Kollox Kontra says:

    How times change. We have moved from a bicca arlogg, to a Glock used by Manuel Mallia’s driver to shoot at civilians in a residential street.

    Qabza fil-kwalita.

  4. Alexander Ball says:

    “All it means is that it won’t go on your police record”

    Damn, how else will you get a cushy job with the government?

  5. Mila says:

    The interpretation of law on this island is worrying.

    Weren’t all the illegal dwellings being supplied with electicity illegally if the necessary procedures, MEPA permit, meter, electrician’s certificate etc. which were requirements for everyone in Malta, not adhered to by the squatters?

    Why would the government legalize some theft and then pounce on other thieves?

    Why has the government not sought and prosecuted also those who authorized the supply work to be carried out.

    http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20141124/local/enemalta-police-descend-on-boathouses-cut-off-power-supply-to-abusers.545497

  6. Dave Alan Caruana says:

    “All it means is that it won’t go on your police record, but it rarely does for first-time offenders and teenagers anyway.”

    This is not the case .. many first time offenders get a suspended sentence which does go on your criminal record and is the equivalent of being sent to jail without the actual jail time.

  7. Antoine Vella says:

    There is a simple way to burst this particular bubble.

    Someone from the Opposition should ask a parliamentary question as to how many people, most particularly first-time offenders, were sent to prison in the last 10 years because they had drugs for personal use.

    • caflanga says:

      as if they’re gonna reply…. they’d say the pq cannot be answered because the job is too big for the taxpayer’s money

  8. pablo says:

    Tomorrow morning a press conference by some Minister to announce the discovery of the wheel. We will be told that this groundbreaking stuff.

  9. gaetano pace says:

    Can anyone suggest to the Minister the proper application of that pure white sheet of white paper he is holding? At the way and rate things are going the nation will soon be needing balefuls of them.

  10. Matthew S says:

    The government has been handing out free syringes with no questions asked to drug users since some time in the early 1990s if I am not mistaken.

    If the police want to arrest drug users, all they need to do is arrest the people hanging out in front of the detoxification centre, but they don’t.

    Drug users are generally well known to the police but unless they steal to fund their habit or break the law in other ways, they leave them alone.

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