Let us picture this scenario: a scene which is being, let us say, performed in Malta over and over again.

A young girl is addicted to drugs, she has undergone drug rehabilitation programmes, she has been to prison more than once – her crime being stealing to get hold of heroin. All to no avail, the drug addict seems determined to keep using drugs or else, let us put it in another way, the problem is bigger than her and she remains addicted to the death-dealing substance.

Everybody tells the parents that there is not much they can do since their daughter is of age and she can control her life; yet those who love her are desolated, wondering if one fine day their beloved daughter is going to lie in the mortuary room stone dead.

As yet there is no law regarding drug abusers who are determined to kill themselves through drugs. Yet should there be a law in favour of parents who do not want to see their offspring dead. I ask the authorities to please help those addicts who do not want to help themselves by forcefully making them do another and another drug programme if necessary until their brain cells start working and they realise that there is no way out for them but to get cleaned up.

If not just for them, for the tormented parents

Valerie Borg

Valletta