In the past few days, an online page with the name of "Raise the Bar’ has been created on Facebook. As the page itself states, its aim is to increase the awareness about the danger of drugs, while at the same time focusing on helping the victims of drugs.
During a seminar which was organised on the 1st of September, various personalities spoke about the need that drug victims are helped, rather than being sentenced to prison.
When contacted by The Third Eye, popular television presenter Peppi Azzopardi explained that instead of being sent to prison, drug victims should be sent to rehabilitation centres, where they are treated as patients and not as delinquents, “they should be sent to these rehabilitation centres for an indefinite time, when someone is sent to hospital they don’t give him a time-limit, similarly drug victims should stay at these rehabilitation centres until they recover completely. Apart from that, they shouldn’t even be given a sentence for crimes which they committed due to drug-addiction, such as stealing.”
During the brief interview, Azzopardi also expressed his concern at the fact that people try to separate some drugs from others, most noticeably creating a distinction between Marijuana and other drugs. According to Azzopardi, this doesn’t make sense as all drugs could be dangerous and there should be no distinction between them. He also made a reference the belief that alcohol is "safer’ than drugs, as he mentioned that locally we have higher rates of deaths by alcohol than by drugs, apart from other consequences such as violence and traffic-accidents.
Finally, Azzopardi mentioned that unfortunately, first-time offenders are given a second-chance, while those who have been caught with drugs repeatedly are sent directly to prison, “this is wrong, as the ones who really need help are the ones who make use of drugs repeatedly and "occasional users’, such as those who take drugs during a party,” concluded Azzopardi.
The public is encouraged to voice their opinion on this page, which in a just a few days has reached more than one thousand likes.
