Drug abuse

...ba href=/drug abuse/a/b has failed." Mr Lloyd said the potential key to solving the problem was making the risks for criminals much greater in relation to the potential rewards, so they decide that it simply isn't worth carrying on.

In other words - removing the financial rewards for the dealers would drive them out of business.

He said: "Major drug dealers are running very successful businesses.

They have ready access to large supplies of cheap products produced, largely, in some of the poorest parts of the world.

"They have a willing network of salespeople, often users them-selves, and they can sit back and rake in the cash with very little risk to themselves.

"Even though excellent policing and the opportunity to seize assets from criminals can be effective, the effects are limited and the continuing misery caused by the drugs trade is readily apparent." Although drug dealers already face lengthy jail terms and are still prepared to take the risks because the rewards are so high, increasing sentences could be part of the new solution.

"If the rewards available to dealers are undermined by making drugs available to those desperate to get them at no cost; if these criminals, therefore, cannot profit from selling drugs then there is no motivation for them to stay in business.

They would go bust.

"This is very different from legalising drugs.

In fact, tightening restrictions on drug use outside authorised channels would be necessary to support the new approach.

This is about taking the con...

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... MaltaToday MALTATODAY BUSINESSTODAY WEB For & Against • 26 March 2006 Detaining asylum seekers Should the government pursue its policy of mandatory detention for asylum seekers?

The request increasingly being voiced by a decreasing minority to close the detention centres for illegal immigrants is likewise an emotive plea and is destined to falter under the scrutiny of rational argument.

The Geneva Convention of 1951 clearly states that ‘Asylum is guaranteed by the right of a state to grant Asylum’ and not by the right of an individual to be granted asylum.

The sovereignty of a state lies in its citizens and not in supranational institutions or non-governmental organisations.

The democratic imperative of how a society should control its borders and the safety of it well being, resides with that society itself and no one else.

The Maltese public, through its state, endorses the use of detention centres not only to serve primarily as a deterrent but also to serve practical, secondary functions.

If the Maltese public was consulted directly, there is no doubt that not only does it approve of detention centres but also disapprove of the fact the illegal immigrants are released into the host society irrelevant of their backgrounds or conditions once the obligatory detention period expires.

The illegal immigrants kept in detention centres (usually because of the deliberate destruction of their identity papers and false fabrications) are those whom the state de...