For two consecutive weeks we saw Xarabank discussing a subject which has become a scourge in Malta with a ferocious intensity – drug addiction.

Although for once we have seen the horrifying effects of drug abuse instead of dramatising the burglaries a drug addict resorts to for the sake of drugs, we have still yet to establish a strategy which will lessen, if not wipe out entirely, drugs from our shores.

Although Caritas, Sedqa, Oasi and other drug rehabilitation centres do their utmost to give the drug addict a new lease of life when doing the programme, we must come to terms with the fact that an addict can leave the rehabilitation programme whenever he decides and some have done the programme more than once, yet still sometimes fall again.

Legalising drugs is not the answer. By legalising drugs we are sending out a message to the drug user. Honey, you can be a drug addict. It is your right and society is giving you the means to “use” quietly without being a hindrance to the same society.

In the year 2003, when Australia witnessed the death of one 14-year-old addicted to heroin, Prime Minister John Howard decided that government schools and state schools had the right to introduce urine testing so that children or youths on drugs could be detected early. Why isn’t something exemplary like this not followed in Malta?

On Thursday 27 July 2001, Mgr Victor Grech stated that never has the problem concerning drugs in Malta reached such gigantic proportions. Today, in the year 2006, the drug problem has inevitably become worse.

We must start looking for further solutions, like whisking away drug users with or without their consent. An old adage says that you can take a horse to the water but you cannot make it drunk. Alas, that statement is as false as the existence of King Kong. Even a horse, frustrated with the rays of the sun day after day after day will finally bow its head to drink.

Drug rehabilitation should be a must. If a user starts using drugs once on the outside, he should be put back in again for he is definitely a threat to himself, his family and society in general.

What are we really doing for drug users?

Valerie Borg

Valletta