A leading drugs policy expert believes members of Malta’s planned cannabis associations should be allowed to consume cannabis on site rather than being restricted to only doing so at home.
“It was an issue that came up in several of our meetings these past two days, and the social role of associations should be promoted as going beyond a place where members get cannabis to take home,” said Martin Jelsma, Programme Director for Drugs and Democracy at the Netherlands-based Transnational Institute.
As it stands, the law will not allow members to smoke cannabis on the premises of planned cannabis associations.
Jelsma also had strong words of criticism for Maltese authorities' handling of CBD cannabis flow, branding it "absurd".
United Nations-recognised drugs policy expert Martin Jelsma. Photo: TNIThe comments came following a roundtable discussion with drugs policy experts, law enforcement officials and representatives from the Association for the Responsible Use of Cannabis (ARUC) last week, when topics of discussion included decriminalisation, social justice and sustainable development.
According to Jelsma, the treatment of those with cannabis-related convictions is key to ensuring social justice following changes to Malta’s cannabis laws in 2021.
“One of the social justice issues is the expungement of criminal records... for things that are no longer a criminal offence. It should be a State responsibility to expunge them automatically.
“It shouldn’t be the responsibility of the ones that were criminalised for what is now seen as a reasonable thing,” he continued.
Storage and sharing
In 2021, Malta became the first EU country to legalise the recreational cultivation of cannabis, allowing users to grow up to four plants and store up to 50 grams of dried flower at home.
With home growers having reported considerably higher yields in some cases, however, should this figure be revised?
“If the disparity is too large then yes, there should be an adjusted figure – especially for home growing,” said Jelsma.
While some home growers may feel tempted to share excess yield with friends, doing so is considered drug trafficking in the eyes of the law, something Jelsma thinks should also be revised.
“That level of sharing among friends is going to happen and should not be criminalised,” he said, though he admitted it was difficult to allow to balance this with preventing people from opening their own dispensaries informally at home.
“That should not be allowed,” said Jelsma, a political scientist specialising in Latin America and international drugs policy and a recipient of the Alfred R. Lindesmith Award for Achievement in the Field of Scholarship.
CBD arrests 'absurd'
Meanwhile, Jelsma had strong criticism for Malta’s attitude to CBD.
CBD, or cannabidiol, is the second most common compound in cannabis after tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). While THC is what gives cannabis its psychoactive effect, or ‘high’, CBD has no psychoactive properties. It is often used for its medicinal properties.
While it is generally sold as a component in oils, edible and cosmetic products, CBD is also available in flower form, visually indistinguishable from psychoactive cannabis.
In 2021, doctor and Pain Clinic founder Andrew Agius was charged with suspicion of importing and trafficking narcotics after police seized CBD cannabis flowers from his establishment, an incident Jelsma described as “absurd”.
“CBD should not be under any control at all. The World Health Organisation did a serious review of all the available evidence, and they clearly said that CBD should not be under international control... there’s no reason to control it,” he said.
Agius’s arrest came just months after legislators passed a new cannabis law that, among other things, stipulates that CBD “products” with less than 0.2% THC do not qualify as cannabis.
His lawyers have argued that the CBD cannabis flowers that police seized fall under that definition; prosecutors, on the other hand, say that cannabis flowers are not “products” and are therefore excluded.
Production and climate change
Jelsma also highlighted social justice issues outside the country, including the need for cannabis producers in the global South to be included in the supply chain of newly regulated cannabis markets in Europe.
It was important, he said, to “responsibly regulate so that those traditional producers... who are dependent on it for their income and who have been supplying the international market for decades, do not get left behind.”
Moving the production of cannabis to cooler climates and transitioning to indoor growing environments also had repercussions for climate change, he said.
While discussing areas that require further work, Jelsma was keen to point out that Malta’s model of cannabis regulation was one other countries could learn from.
“From the beginning, Malta has opted for a non-commercial system, and I think that has been a very wise choice,” he said.
“Especially after seeing how Germany and Luxembourg – that originally launched plans for full regulation, including retail sales – have both been forced to scale back their plans because of EU regulation.
“Now, Germany, as a first phase at least, is implementing the Maltese model.”
The principle of eschewing a more consumer-driven model was good, he said, to avoid corporate capture of the market.
“Tobacco and alcohol companies starting to invest, trying to get monopoly positions, advertising and pushing... That corporate-driven profit model is the one that has caused a lot of concerns.”