{"id":3162,"date":"2021-12-21T07:23:58","date_gmt":"2021-12-21T07:23:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cannabisnow.com\/?p=58121"},"modified":"2021-12-21T07:23:58","modified_gmt":"2021-12-21T07:23:58","slug":"malta-becomes-first-european-country-to-legalize-cannabis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/?p=3162","title":{"rendered":"Malta Becomes First European Country to Legalize Cannabis"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Malta\u2019s parliament on Dec. 14 voted 36-to-27 to approve a measure legalizing possession, cultivation and regulated sale of cannabis. Malta has been a European Union in 2004, which puts this deeply conservative archipelago ahead of continental leaders like the Netherlands as the first in the EU to legalize. <\/p>\n

The law allows people to hold up to seven grams on their person, and to grow up to four plants and keep up to 50 grams of dried cannabis at home. It also establishes a framework for regulated sales, and for expungement of past convictions.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s groundbreaking,\u201d Equality Minister Owen Bonnici, who introduced the bill, told the New York Times<\/a>. \u201cMalta can be a model for harm reduction.\u201d <\/p>\n

Conservative Opposition Outmaneuvered<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is indeed a counterintuitive development. The overwhelmingly Catholic archipelago had notoriously been under the rule of a Crusader military order, the Knights of Malta<\/a>, for more than two-and-a-half centuries starting in the late Middle Ages, and this cultural stamp is still very much in evidence. Divorce was only legalized in Malta in 2011.<\/p>\n

The cannabis legalization bill was carefully crafted to reassure the conservative opposition, and portrayed as strategy to undercut criminal networks. \u201cWe are going to curb drug trafficking by making sure that people who make use of cannabis now have a safe and regularized way from where they can obtain cannabis,\u201d Bonnici told Reuters<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Retail outlets will be confined to nonprofit associations, to be registered with an Authority on the Responsible Use of Cannabis. These association will be able to sell no more than seven grams a day to their members, for a maximum of 50 grams a month. Public smoking will remain illegal, and fines of up to \u20ac500 are imposed for smoking in the presence of a minor. Those found to be holding in excess of the modest seven grams but still below 28 grams (about an ounce) are slapped with a fine of \u20ac100. Above 28 grams, the criminal penalties remain intact.<\/p>\n

But Malta\u2019s conservative bloc was not appeased. The bill was the work of the leftist Labor Party<\/a>, which has ruled since 2013.  And the vote was on party lines, with the opposition Nationalist Party<\/a> voting against. Nationalist leader Bernard Grech charged that the bill would \u201conly lead to the strengthening of the illegal market, with organized crime taking advantage,\u201d BBC News<\/a> notes.<\/p>\n

President George Vella signed the bill into law on Dec. 18, which was a mere formality\u2014under the Maltese system, the presidency is a largely ceremonial post. Real power lies with parliament and the prime minister. Nonetheless, Vella had to resist demands from the opposition that he not sign the bill, Malta Today<\/a> reports. He forthrightly refused this demand, saying he had no power to withhold his signature from legislation passed by parliament. He even went on TV to scold the opposition: \u201cThe head of state cannot capriciously create a constitutional crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the law took effect, the Nationalist Party issued a statement pledging to \u201ctake the necessary measures in the parliament to repeal it,\u201d and accusing Prime Minister Robert Abela of \u201cnormalizing drug use.\u201d However, as Malta Today<\/a> notes, if they didn\u2019t have enough votes to block the legislation, they probably don\u2019t have enough to repeal it.<\/p>\n

A Changing Malta<\/strong><\/p>\n

Malta has been opening up considerably over the past years of Labor Party rule. In March 2018, the government legalized medical marijuana<\/a>, allowing doctors to prescribe cannabis for chronic pain, multiple sclerosis and side effects of chemotherapy. This replaced an earlier law that only recognized prescriptions from medical specialists, and was so restrictive that not a single Maltese had yet been treated legally with any cannabis-based product. <\/p>\n

Today there are 40,000 enrolled members in the medical marijuana program, and the list of qualifying ailments has greatly increased. However, with domestic cultivation barred, supply was dependent on imports from companies such as Bedrocan<\/a> of the Netherlands. Given the global supply-chain crisis, this has led to severe shortages in the archipelago, as LovinMalta<\/a> website reported last year.<\/p>\n

This is set to change now. And Malta\u2019s loosening up is in part a response to the global crisis. The Ministry for Equality, Research & Innovation<\/a>, Bonnici\u2019s post, was just created this year to coordinate post-COVID strategy, as the Times of Malta<\/a> reported in July. <\/p>\n

On the day the legalization measure was passed, Malta Today<\/a> ran an angry opinion piece by Andrew Bonello, president of the reform lobby Releaf Malta<\/a>, and Robert Fenech of the progressive youth organization Moviment Graffitt<\/a>. Noting the continued high level of cannabis arrests on the island, the editorial accused the opposition of \u201cexhibiting arguments borne out of a medieval mindset.\u201d <\/p>\n

Wrote Bonello and Fenech: \u201cCalls for zero-tolerance and witch-hunts\u2026are reflective of a society rooted in vindictive moralistic stances, instead of a society geared towards education and sound scientific and empirical research on social and health issues, such as the widespread consumption of cannabis.\u201d<\/p>\n

The First Domino of European Prohibition? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Malta is on the very fringe of Europe\u2014it is south of Sicily and much closer to Tunisia than to Rome. And it is a relative new-comer to the EU. But while several European countries\u2014most notoriously the Netherlands\u2014have adopted very tolerant cannabis policies, Malta is now the first to actually legalize.  <\/p>\n

\u201cMalta has formally legislated what exists in other European countries in a weird gray area,\u201d Steve Rolles of the Transform Drug Policy Foundation<\/a>, an advocacy group in the UK, told the New York Times.<\/p>\n

There is a sense that the European tide may finally be turning, however. Continental leader Germany is said to be considering legalization<\/a> since a new coalition government including the Greens<\/a> took over this month. A legalization bill introduced in October is currently pending<\/a> before parliament in Luxembourg\u2014like Malta a mini-state, but in the very heart of Europe. <\/p>\n

Malta may seem a paradoxical vanguard for cannabis reform, but there is a sense that if it can happen there, Europe\u2019s leading powers may be feeling the pressure to catch up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Malta\u2019s parliament on Dec. 14 voted 36-to-27 to approve a measure legalizing possession, cultivation and regulated sale of cannabis. Malta has been a European Union in 2004, which puts this deeply conservative archipelago ahead of continental leaders like the Netherlands as the first in the EU to legalize.  The law allows people to hold up to seven grams on their person, and to grow up to four plants and keep up to 50 grams of dried cannabis at home. It also establishes a framework for regulated sales, and for expungement of past convictions. \u201cIt\u2019s groundbreaking,\u201d Equality Minister Owen Bonnici, who… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marijuana_information"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}