Marijuana decriminalised… for celebrities

Aren’t you positively delighted to be living in such a ‘progressive, moderate’ country? I mean, just look at all the ‘progressive, moderate’ goodies already delivered by our ‘progressive, moderate’ government in just three years….

Civil partnerships. The end of the Church-State marriage agreement. The abolition of censorship (at least, for everyone who – unlike Brikkuni’s Mario Vella – agrees to only ever praise Malta’s ‘progressive, moderate’ government and all its achievements)… and of course, the decriminalisation of soft drugs for personal use.

WHOAH! Hold it right there. If this were the beginning of a documentary about drug legislation in Malta (I think it would make a good one), it would be the part where the music in the background is suddenly interrupted by a savage scratch on the record. 

Decriminalisation? What decriminalisation? The one that resulted in at least 26 people arrested at last month’s Earth Garden festival … for simple possession of a substance ‘thought to be marijuana’? 

While I’m on this particular example (which is only one of literally hundreds)… ‘thought to be marijuana’ by whom, exactly? The people who smoked the stuff? It’s either marijuana or it isn’t, you know. And if you can’t tell what it even is, then you have just as much reason to suspect that it might be plutonium or kryptonite. 

And there you have it. Suddenly, we could all be arrested as potential terrorists or DC Comics supervillains at any given moment… just for being in possession of any old ‘thing’ the average Maltese policeman can’t identify at a glance.

But hey, that only proves how ‘progressive’ and ‘moderate’ we really are. We are forever ‘progressing’ towards a ‘moderate’ form of national psychosis…

OK, now let’s try a little something out. How many of you actually remember that marijuana was supposed to have been ‘decriminalised’ in this country two years ago? Let’s see now: that’s you, me… your dog, my dog… Wiz Khalifa, Snoop Dogg, and… yep, just as I figured. The entire executive arm of the Maltese state didn’t raise its hand.  In fact, it is debatable whether they ‘forgot’ this teenie-weenie detail… or whether they were unaware of it in the first place. 

Certainly, ‘decriminalisation’ has not stopped the Malta Police Force from arresting, detaining, interrogating and prosecuting any number of individuals caught with even minuscule amounts of the drug, under circumstances that plainly denote ‘personal use’. Makes you wonder what the ‘progressive, moderate’ government of Malta actually understood by its own words, when it proudly announced that Malta would be radically reforming its draconian, antiquated and counter-productive drug laws, to ensure that young people are no longer ‘criminalised’ by the system.

 Ah, but then Isle of MTV comes along… and year in, year out, it’s always the same. The police turn up to the event en masse, forever on the lookout for youngsters in possession of (real or imaginary) marijuana… while the international global MTV sensation of the moment – currently rapping right there on the stage, in full view of the police – has only just uploaded photos of himself calmly puffing on a spliff on a boat in the Blue Lagoon… and even boasting to the world that he had just defied Malta’s drug laws in public. 

Good for Wiz Khalifa, I have to say. At least, he’s not the one being inconsistent here. He is on record saying (in response to the question: ‘Should marijuana be legalised?’)… “Definitely, legalise it. Please, everybody needs it. The world would be a better place...”

As far as I can see, that’s called ‘practising what you preach’. It’s generally considered a good thing, regardless of what you make of the subject of the sermon. But can the ‘progressive, moderate’ government of Malta make the same claim? Did it really ‘practise what it preached’ when it talked about ‘decriminalising soft drugs for personal use’? Or must we conclude that the traditional stereotype of ‘evil drug-user’ is actually more honest and scrupulous as a citizen, than the people who actually decide what is ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ for everyone else? 

If so, that’s a pretty powerful argument in favour of legalisation, all on its own.

In any case: bloody hypocrites, the lot of you (No, not you, Wiz. The ones in the suits.) I honestly thought I was so inured to Maltese political hypocrisy by now, that it had lost the power to anger me. Well, it hasn’t. This angers me. It is bad enough that we still treat perfectly harmless dope smokers as ‘supervillains’ plotting to destroy the entire planet… but that we also boast of our drug laws as ‘progressive and moderate’… when they are only ever enforced against the weak and the penniless, while the rich and the ultra-famous are free to simply ignore them at will? 

That’s just disgusting. No other word for it.

By the way: I am obviously writing this before Khalifa’s gig tonight. I have no idea what he intends to do on stage, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if (like Snoop before him) he urges the police to ‘chill out and smoke a spliff’ in front of a cheering crowd. What if he actually sparks up on stage?  Reckon he’d be arrested? Ordinary nobodies in this country have done time for a lot less… but then again, the police didn’t arrest Snoop Dogg, either… when he turned up to an interview with Vanity Fair smoking a spliff in the lobby of a local hotel.

Oh, and then there’s also that small detail concerning importation. Where did both Snoop and Wiz get hold of the marijuana they so freely smoked while in Malta? Normally, that’s the sort of question that would be asked under interrogation at the police headquarters. Did they buy it locally? Did they bring it in with them into the country?

In the latter case, there has been no ‘decriminalisation’ at all. Are we to understand, then, that drug mules and 15-year-old Swiss tourists – remember Gisela Feuz, anyone? – can face prison terms for ‘trafficking’… while multi-millionaire celebrities are not even arrested for the same crime? Any lawyers out there care to explain exactly why?

Interestingly, the tourism minister of our ‘progressive, moderate’ government was asked much the same question directly. How comfortable is Dr Edward Zammit Lewis with the fact that Wiz Khalifa, whom his ministry has sponsored to perform at this year’s Isle of MTV, has just made Malta’s hypocritical drug laws the public laughing stock of the entire world?

I have to reproduce his reply in full, because it is truly staggering. “These artists often have their own style. We welcome Wiz Khalifa to Malta. This is a free country, but there are local laws and we expect all visitors to adhere to those laws”.

Yes, Dr Zammit Lewis, that was entirely the point of the question. But it is slightly too late to ‘expect’ Wiz Khalifa to ‘adhere to the local laws’… when he has only just defecated abundantly all over them. And guess what? He even spared the police the bother of trying to extract a confession. He willingly and voluntarily ‘confessed’ the crime, all of his own accord, for all the world to see. It was the equivalent of: “Look at me, I’m breaking all your shitty little local laws… now what are you gonna do about it, punks?”

Well, Dr Zammit Lewis? What ARE you gonna do about it? Anyone else would have been arrested, detained, interrogated and prosecuted. Yet this guy not only gets away with it scot-free, but is even allowed to go ahead and perform at a State-sponsored event, as if nothing happened at all.

The question assumes greater relevance when you consider how local people involved in the same music industry – only at a much, much, MUCH lower level – have been treated for precisely the same offence. Any local Maltese DJ who has ever been caught doing what Wiz Khalifa did with such impunity at the Blue Lagoon, is automatically blacklisted by the police… and cannot ever DJ anywhere again.

Even without the naked hypocrisy staring us all in the face, that is an outrage unto itself. Even murderers and rapists are allowed to work, once they’ve served their sentence and been ‘reformed’ though the ‘correctional (ahem) facilities’. But a DJ who smoked a spliff, even just once in his life, can abandon all hope of working in his or her chosen field, ever again.

Unless, of course, they land a nice, big fat juicy contract with MTV, sell six million singles worldwide, and wind up on the cover of Rolling Stone. Then, not only are they allowed to perform wherever they like… but they are even invited to do so at the expense of the ‘progressive, moderate’ government of Malta, and celebrated nationally as role models for society. 

And suddenly, it all falls into place. Yes, Malta’s ‘progressive, moderate’ government really did ‘decriminalise soft drugs for personal use’ two years ago. It’s just that this ‘decriminalisation’ only applies to the ‘personal use’ of the handful of multi-millionaire celebrity rappers and Hollywood superstars who just happen to occasionally come to Malta (Does Angelina Jolie smoke pot, I wonder? Would she have been arrested if caught doing so at Mgarr ix-Xini last year? Yeah right…). 

For everyone else, however, it’s the standard 48 hours in the chip… and for DJs at the bottom rung of Wiz Khalifa’s own ladder, it’s a permanent, irreversible ban on ever working again. 

I challenge anyone out there – you, too, Wiz, if you’re reading this – to come up with a more glaring, blatant and utterly disgusting example of discrimination with the blessing of the law.