The Arrest Referral Scheme (ARS) that contemplates first time drug users being given help instead of a criminal record is undoubtedly a huge step in the right direction for the country’s still archaic drug laws.

There are, however, a great many more steps that also need to be taken before the country is brought abreast with current best practices. Unlike in areas such as immigration or spring hunting, where, albeit with dubious argumentation, Malta insists that it is a special case because of its special circumstances, when it comes to drug laws, there is no such argumentation – a drug addict is an addict wherever that person is. And, in Malta, the rate of dependency on drugs is said to be growing at an alarmingly fast rate.

The idea behind the ARS proposal, according to the government, is to help rather than punish the victims of drugs. And while the proposal is very worthy, there are many more steps that still need to be taken before the country’s approach to the drug problem is well and truly modernised.

A classification system that differentiates between hard and soft drugs, is one such instance that springs immediately to mind, as does a legal differentiation between personal use cultivation and trafficking – neither of which currently exists.

In short, the ARS will allow those who have been arrested for the first time for the possession of drugs exclusively for their personal use to, instead of facing charges in court and the prospect of getting themselves a permanent criminal record, to undergo therapy that would be prescribed by an Extra Judicial Body (EJB).

Such rehabilitation may include, amongst measures, brief crisis intervention, motivational interviewing and drug counselling, community service, supervision, leisure education, and urine tests for a stipulated number of months.

The proposal combines an ARS with a diversionary form of proceedings to an EJB. To be eligible, an arrestee must be a first time offender, be in simple possession of an illicit substance and admit to his or her guilt.

It also follows two recommendations from the 2008 National Drugs Policy - the setting up of a drug court that streamlines drug offence cases, which has been done, and facilitating a restorative justice approach.

The 2010 National Youth Policy, which pertains to people aged between 12 and 30, calls for ‘diversionary tactics’ when it comes to young people and drug offences. In 2010, the proposal published this week points out, 85% of all arrests made for simple possession were of people aged between 15 and 34, and 17% of those were offenders between 30 and 34 years of age.

That means that the vast majority of arrests for drug possession involve offenders under the age of 30 and as such, it is expected that the vast majority of people making use of the ARS will be young offenders, people who certainly do not deserve a permanent criminal record for, as an example, smoking a joint.

The proposal also notes that a steady increase in drug offences is ‘weighing down the courts’ and is hampering the ‘effective delivery of justice’, so much so that the ‘machinery of justice is being stretched and a diversionary scheme would prove to be a welcome development in the field’.

The number of pending drug offences before the Magistrate’s Court at the end of 1999 stood at 70, while by the end of July 2011 that backlog had grown nearly ten times over to 655.

The proposal also cites research indicating that a diversion from the formal Criminal Justice System (CJS) may halt the progress of addictive and criminal careers among young people, while the immediate processing of cases outside the formal CJS for first time offenders would secure a more effective response from the offenders and prove to be more cost effective than processing through the CJS.

Other advantages cited by the proposal are: more cost effective procedures that relieve the burden of such cases both from police and the courts; a reduction in the time between arrest and contact with service providers, a contribution to a higher rate of success in relation to desistance from substance use; and provide assistance to the police in the related investigation and prosecution of third parties.

These in themselves are huge steps forward from previous practices, but there are still lacunas that need to be addressed and the results of the public consultation exercise, which runs until 10 August, will make for very interesting reading.