The Times of Malta
Caritas is increasingly receiving calls from concerned parents as cannabis smoke wafted into their apartments from neighbours smoking downstairs, or teachers not knowing what to do as schoolchildren faced problems caused by their parents.
“We used to warn that the enactment of the new law would convey the wrong message… that we would have an enforcement problem…. that youths at risk would transit faster to cocaine… that cannabis would be seen as nothing major… that admissions to Mater Dei and Mount Carmel would increase…Some told us we were scaremongering,” Gatt recalled.
“We know what happened for cigarettes, and we are seeing the same thing with cannabis. While tobacco could cause cancer, cannabis was a danger for mental health, he said.
Since October last year, Caritas, along with the Oasi Foundation and the University had been pushing the authorities to ban the sale of synthetic cannabis products known as HHC from grocers, corner shops and stationers. Yet now one could even go on Maltese websites to buy Gummy MDMA and Gummy speed, Gatt said. A sample had been sent to a laboratory for testing and it had revealed traces of MDMA (Ecstasy), Ketamine and Amphetamine.
“This is a dark moment,” Gatt said, although he believed matters could be resolved with proper law enforcement.
He believed, he said, that the Cannabis regulatory authority was serious in the way it authorised the opening of social clubs, but it was worrying that an information campaign by the same authority to inform the public where cannabis could be consumed said nothing about cannabis being dangerous.
Read full article https://timesofmalta.com/article/caritas-director-hits-poor-enforcement-cannabis-law.1094560
