Cyrus Engerer’s father, persecuted? Just listen to this song from 1986. That’s how long (and more, of course) he’s been at it.

Yesterday I wrote that far from being persecuted, Chris Engerer – Cyrus Engerer’s father – has got away with it for years and should have been thrown in jail a long time ago.

As far back as the mid-1980s, when I was always at Exiles beach in Sliema because I lived across the road, he was at it already (he ran the clubhouse there).

Hicks from the sticks like the prime minister won’t know anything about this. Malta was very different back then and people raised in villages stayed in their village and led a completely different life to those of all social classes who lived in the urban core around Grand Harbour.

My contemporaries know exactly who Chris Engerer is: he was the pothead waster who could barely get his act together to open the beach bar in the afternoon, and who didn’t only use marijuana.

When I first found out that Cyrus Engerer is Chris’s son, I just couldn’t believe it. I was bug-eyed with incredulity. What?I thought it was amazing that the son of a pothead waster like that would make his way into post-graduate education and politics, dress smartly and speak well.

In fact, this is Cyrus Engerer’s tragedy: that he overcame all of that, achieved what he did, and then pressed the self-destruct button.

The mid-1980s was the big era of marijuana in Malta. Some Golden Years protege must have been trafficking it in collusion with some Golden Years politician/s. That was the time when you couldn’t get a Mars bar or a tube of proper toothpaste for love or money, but you could get all the grass you wanted. People were terrified of being caught ‘smuggling’ packets of pasta into Malta, but marijuana? No problem.

The place – well, the urban core – was full of potheads in a way that it isn’t now. You don’t see that sort of thing anymore or hear that hooded-eye drawl.

It’s precisely because so many people were living in the village sticks back then, weren’t even born or were still at school, that they think marijuana is a new argument and a new experience for Malta.

The reality is far otherwise, and this song from 1986 gives a true picture of the situation. Can you imagine singing a song like this at a public festival TODAY? No.

And don’t miss the line ‘Ejjew ninzlu sal-Exiles, forsi insiru koko.’ Persecuting Chris Engerer, my eye.

You just have to wonder what Labour’s plans to decriminalise the possession of illegal drugs for personal use are all about, and what the motivation is. The prime minister said that Cyrus Engerer convinced him of many things. Doubtless, this is one of them. Engerer should be arguing for the opposite, knowing just how deleterious it is and how it wrecked his father’s life and his own growing-up years.