I admire (and appreciate) your patience, so here goes.

I remember the ‘smack era’ well and had friends who also got hooked. You mention heroin, what about people falling asleep on the wheel on the way back from Gianpula, after popping downers? They also died a horrible death.

Can a medical professional on this site cite the estimated number of people abusing (and hooked) on legal tranquillisers or anxiety medication?

You are simply using ‘sad’ stories, taking it to an extreme to put your views across; you do not need to. I see your point and you are right in part but the problem is not so simple and has many dimensions, some of them perceived.

Prohibition of cannabis ( I am yet to be convinced as to other substances) is not a solution but a method of incentivising organised crime, which breeds corruption and violence. It makes criminals out of people and stigmatises them for it.

[Daphne – Actually it does not stigmatise people and make criminals out of them. People are very clear on who the real criminals are in these equations. The weakness of your argument, which is why it fails to convince, is its fallacious logic. Banning a substance keeps both production and consumption at much lower levels than they would be if the substance were not banned. That is a good thing, not a bad thing. The other flaw in your argument is that decriminalising cannabis (or any other currently illegal drug) will help control organised crime which breeds corruption and violence. It won’t. That’s why I gave you the example of the vast trade in smuggled cigarettes and arms. Both are legal. But a huge parallel market exists in smuggling. It will be no different with cocaine, heroin or cannabis. Do you imagine that criminals who are now making huge fortunes from trafficking will either give up the business or go legal? Neither: they will stay illegal and compete with the legal operations, and the legal operations will be really up against it because the criminal operators were in there first and..because they’re criminal and not averse to getting rid of you if you get in the way. Has legal prostitution stopped the white slave trade? No, it’s fed it.]

The only people I know who were went to medical care after smoking cannabis were only paranoid after consuming too much. Too much of anything is obviously bad.

[Daphne – Not quite. I’ve known some people who smoked cannabis every day with no discernible effect except that they were immensely boring company and couldn’t function properly (though I never knew quite what came first, the weed or the malfunction). And I’ve known a few who suffered paranoid psychosis after just a short period of smoking it. So no, it’s not really a matter of too much. Some people chain-smoke all their lives and die at 80 of other causes. Some people live with somebody who smokes and die of lung cancer at 50. And nobody dies of alcohol unless they become extreme alcoholics. Drinking a glass of wine every day is not a potential trigger to anything – unlike smoking a joint every day.]

As to your argument that ‘subsidising’ people who abuse food, alcohol, cigarettes etc – not adding to the list shouldn’t be the concern but reducing that list should be the target – as with cannabis use. However, it is always the individual who makes the final choice and the legality of a choice is not always a concern to those who truly understand that the ‘problem’ is a perception that has grown on society.

[Daphne – You don’t reduce cannabis use by decriminalising possession for personal use and making it more widely available and accessible, logical. That does precisely the opposite. Take cigarettes for example. It’s legal to buy them and smoke them (given only the age restrictions), and it’s also legal to sell them. The consequence? Massive worldwide addiction, children getting addicted as young as 12 and 13 because access to cigarettes is so easy and those who sell them come up with innovative marketing techniques (the latest, e-cigarettes) and a huge burden on the healthcare system which the taxes on cigarettes and on the profit from selling them don’t even begin to cover.]

I can understand your reasoning (which is by and large uninformed) and what worries me is that your position is the kind of mentality that this government is exploiting to their advantage. It happened with all the proposed ‘liberal’ gimmicks. This is not about being liberal but legalising, regulating, taxing and controlling a market.

[Daphne – It’s really a poor idea, Logical, to patronise and talk down to, on the subject of illegal drug use, somebody of my particular age and social background. I come from Malta’s first generation of heroin addicts – not me in particular, but so many of my friends, acquaintances and contemporaries that I can’t even count them. When dealers first began pushing heroin in Malta, they didn’t go to Bormla as they do now it’s become a slum-drug. They went where the money was – to the boys’ boarding schools and the girls who lived round Sliema and went to the better-known convent schools. Malta’s first heroin-induced deaths were all of people I knew, people who lived in my neighbourhood or who were somehow connected with it. They were all in their 20s. One of them was 19. Most of them became hooked on heroin when they were still at school. At 29, I went to the funeral of my best friend’s brother, somebody I grew up with. He was 28. It may surprise you to know that many of my contemporaries today are former heroin addicts because they didn’t all die. They don’t wear signs on their head saying ‘former heroin addict – spent years in recovery programmes’ and with some, you’d be astonished to know it because they hold pretty serious jobs. So next time you’re thinking of lecturing somebody my sort of age and type about illegal drug use on the grounds that they’re some know-nothing conservative dad or housewife, think twice. You might well be making a fool of yourself, though you would never know because they would never tell you the truth as it would probably be none of your business.]

A couple of elderly supporters of drug use have, however, latched on to this brief comment and completely ignored the rest of the article.

It’s true then: marijuana kills brain cells.

Jahsra Daph; If you can read something which irritates you why can’t I? How would I know it irritates me before I read it through and try to understand where you’re coming from?

It is a personal choice and yes, some personal choices have a collective effect. Many negative effects are tolerated through necessity (fuel burning power stations: energy/emissions).

I am not advocating a burden on tax payers, far from it. Policing drug use costs taxpayers well. Taxes on drug sales will finance health concerns – which are being exaggerated as sensible use is not harmful. The police force can be put to better use in preventing real criminals or other things that they do from time to time.

[Daphne – Sorry, Logical, but I give more weight to the arguments of people who actually know what they’re talking about: http://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/6121 ]

Psychosis is aggravated by certain strains of cannabis. The amount smoked will also determine whether a patient is affected or not.

Some people are predisposed towards psychosis and cannabis will aggravate this. The solution is to stay away: if your cholesterol levels are high, don’t eat too much chocolate.

ACD, if anyone is concerned about paying taxes to support drug users, well, alcoholics, food abusers, smokers, etc are already being supported.

[Daphne – So let’s add some more addicted ducks to the list, shall we? Again, a lame argument: we already have lots of people harming themselves with other substances, so why not add some more. Majtezwel. Otherwise it might be seen as discrimination between the legality of different forms of self-harm.]

Drugs will be taxed if they are legalised. Obviously, it is decriminalisation that is being discussed but the long term solution is legislation. (Drug) Taxes would be paying for users health.

[Daphne – You clearly know nothing about the vast, uncontrollable market in cigarette smuggling to evade excise, Logical. And for other reasons: the Irish Republican Army ran a cigarette-smuggling operation in league with a few Maltese some years ago. They used the money they raised to buy arms which were smuggled along the same route and probably also by the same people.]

Daphne, your anti-marijuana position is irritating me. I will not go into the pro and against arguments as they have been exhausted but if you can manage to look beyond you can easily see that this is simply a matter of choice.

There are far more dangerous (legal) substances on the market which are being abused. There are also legal foods that are dangerous or lethal if not controlled by the ‘user’. This leads to the logical conclusion that it is education and self discipline which matter in life as the exposure and temptations are also there.

If you would like a second opinion:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140507/world/Nobel-economists-others-urge-end-to-war-on-drugs-.518026

[Daphne – The solution to not being irritated, if my view on this subject upsets you so much, is to avoid reading it as you have advised others to avoid chocolate if it’s bad for them.

You can at least slap a heavy tax on cigarettes now that it’s around a hundred years too late to ban them outright, which is exactly what should have been done. And yes, then we wouldn’t have had this many smokers. We have this many smokers because smoking is legal.]

To all the above who commented on what I wrote, I have only this to say.

It is persons like you who are doing the most harm to the P.N., unless you admit that the party needs CHANGE, it will keep on sinking the way it is doing now.

The day is not far when our children and in my case grandchildren, will be only reading in their history books that once there was a party called Nationalist Party.

The fact that the P.L has still some of the old guard is no comfort and of course two wrongs won’t make a right.

It’s the unfortunate by-product of the ‘brutalisation of our society’ that Ms Caruana Galizia commented on before here: http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2014/04/labours-big-solution-to-the-burials-problem-is-borrowed-from-the-mafia-dissolving-bodies-in-chemicals/

Labour are re-engineering our society and creating an environment governed by abuse (theirs in particular), fear, uncertainty and envy. The well-intentioned are made to immediately assume that abuse is taking place (because it has become systematic) and may end up hurting others unintentionally in the few instances that this is not the case.

Well, let me tell you, Mr Loporto, under the PN I had a chance to find a proper job because Malta was governed by a party with European values and attracted like-minded entrepreneurs. I studied hard and did well, and didn’t immediately shift to the labour market because I wanted to also undertake a Masters course. I thus had the misfortune of graduating some time before the last election.

So, as someone who’s looking for a decent job for which my years of hard work count for something, let me tell you, the Labour you voted for has endangered my future. Opportunities are becoming scarcer by the day, and any real sense of meritocracy has gone down the drain. I dare not mention our reputation abroad; I’ve had to travel a couple of times since March last year, and all I can say is that news travels fast and I’m tired of having to prove my decency every time someone founds out where I’m from.

I happen to have a keen interest in history both local and international, and even studied it for quite a stretch of my student life. I knew what voting Labour entailed as soon as I saw the echoes of Mintoff in Muscat’s perverted love for him and the people being presented to us as our future Cabinet. They were definitely not only not a substitute for the PN, whatever the latter’s faults, but stood against any progress attained these last years and all that I stand for.

I thankfully never lived through the Golden Years, and am not at the ‘grass roots’ of the PN party itself. I could still see what was coming with clarity. What the hell is your excuse?