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Whether one admits it or not, the drug problem on our shores is not being given any prominence whatsoever. The Maltese media cries out about unemployment, how our ambience is neglected, how to go about urging tourists to visit our island but where the drug problem is concerned – mum’s the word.
For the life of me I cannot understand how a problem that concerns us all is being shoved under the carpet as if it does not exist at all. It is indeed a pity that the people who should be on the frontline to combat this problem are doing next to nothing to try and find a solution. Or at least to lessen substance abuse that is eliminating the lives of many in their young years.
Not only are they as silent as the grave where the abuse of drugs is concerned but it seems that nobody is admitting that we do have a problem and that in itself is our major problem.
One only has to pop in to Caritas in Floriana to see in front of you a bunch of youngsters hardly out of their nappies absolutely stoned by the use of drugs.
Where are all these drugs coming from? I am not asking this question because I am naïve, but how is it possible that a country as minute as Malta cannot tackle this problem? For heaven’s sake, Malta is not the Big Apple where, reasonably enough, the drug problem can’t be solved because it is inhabited by such a large population? Do our politicians know that the drug problem is their concern too, a major concern I should say because they themselves could come face to face with this problem, and their children are not immune just because they are a minister’s son or daughter?
Do these people care that there is no place in Malta that is not infiltrated by drugs? Nowhere is safe - not in schools, not in prison, not in places of entertainment, not in work places and last, but not least, not in the streets. What can we do to combat this growing evil amongst us which is spreading like a raging cancer?
Can somebody specify how we are combating this problem in the places I mentioned before?
A few weeks ago I met this guy who was going to enter a place of rehabilitation to put an end once and for all to his drug problem. I knew he had served time for stealing but I never knew he had a drug problem to boot.
“It all started in jail” he said to me. Read this loud to yourself: he started his drug habit in prison, the place where the citizen is protected from the criminal but where the criminal is not protected from the trafficker. When the hell are we going to stop making a sensation out of drug addicts who buy drugs for their own personal use get arrested while the crafty drug barons go free?
Or have we come to the state where nobody gives a damn about anything anymore? Is life which one should hold dear so unimportant anymore that one should just shut his ears when another addict is found dead near the detox like one Madeline Ancilleri?
Has anybody noticed that we have lost control over this drug game of death or are our politicians sleeping like good old sleeping beauty? Hey Mr Politician, hey Mrs Politician, Hey Mr Prime Minister, Hey Mr Leader of the Opposition, do you know that your own kids could have this problem and you don’t even know about it? You don’t even do something about it? When, God forbid, this problem might be your son’s or daughter’s?
Valerie Borg
Valletta
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