“Growing your own weed is no different from growing your own mint or basil,” he said, “so when the police knocked I immediately cooperated. According to everything I believed in, I had done nothing wrong. It was the law that was wrong.”

Today, with Malta’s government allowing the growth of up four cannabis plants per household following a late 2021 law update, the state has clearly caught up with David’s mode of thinking.

But Malta was different back then. This was just a few years after the arrest of Daniel Holmes, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison for growing weed in his Gozo home.

Malta was, at the time, being led by a conservative Nationalist government that had been in power for nearly a quarter of a century – and the police were more than comfortable cracking down on easy targets, such as people growing two plants at home.

“Back then,” David explains, “the law stated that any form of cultivation of cannabis was the same as trafficking, and carried an effective prison sentence of a minimum of six months to a maximum of 10 years.”

Under Maltese law, the term effective is similar to the US’ mandatory – it means that the court had no possibility to avoid throwing the accused in jail.

“It’s just as we’ve seen in the past, with magistrates complaining that ‘their hands are tied’.”

“The mere thought of losing your liberty, especially for something which the same state confirms today shouldn’t even be a crime, isn’t easy to carry.”

Relieved that “the sword of Damocles isn’t hanging on my head anymore”, David can’t help but feel angry at the waste of time, energy and resources that his 12-year-long legal battle has caused.

“I’m angry and frustrated that so many innocent people have to suffer due to the past draconian laws before the state realised that growing your own hemp is no crime,” he said.

“I consider myself lucky for having the right support structures, stamina and a natural penchant to give the finger to unjust laws so I could pull through and come out of this debacle more or less unscathed…”

“But let’s not forget that many many others were not as lucky and I do hope that someday the state will have the decency to compensate these individuals for all the harm caused to them due to unjust and senseless laws.”

Throughout the 12-year ordeal, David got to see Malta’s justice system up close – warts and all.

“What stayed with me overall is the inefficiency and super slow pace of the Maltese courts,” David said. “Waiting months for a session, which either gets deferred at the last minute or happens only for the court registrar to confirm that the accused has no other pending cases, is not on.”

During his arrest, police officers didn’t hold back from intimidating David, making him believe the worst was yet to come.

“According to the CID who came knocking on my door those years ago, I was going down (as back then a prison term was inevitable). But if I meet him today, I’d gladly ask him: ‘who’s laughing now?'”

The bittersweet feeling of having been vindicated in his innocence, combined with strong emotions of having to have been dragged through the court system to prove it, leaves David with mixed feelings.

“I feel vindicated in a sense now that the laws changed to more or less what us activists have been saying for decades. In 2008 (two years before the police came knocking on my door) I was already giving my first interview in favour of cannabis legalisation to Christian Peregin, back then a Times of Malta journalist.”

“I remember clearly that the editor stopped its publishing unless it also carried the opposite opinion given by a doctor, a lawyer and a social worker. So it was the opinion of an activist against three professionals – and guess whose was right in the end?”

“However, I cannot fully feel vindicated until the state recognises the harm it has caused in the past to innocent people and pay up to compensate. No compensation will ever give back the time and opportunities taken away from these individuals, but at least it can kickstart the healing process for many,” David emphasised.

“Injustice trauma is real and the state ought to take responsibility when it is its cause.”

His arrest didn’t stop David mobilising to get the topic of cannabis legalisation onto the agenda, setting up Malta’s largest pro-cannabis forum, Legalize It Malta.

“Before LIM, there was practically nothing apart from a handful of activists lobbying politicians for a change in law. LIM placed the issue of cannabis legalisation in the spotlight by organising protests and demonstrations, and by voicing our opinion on local TV, radio, newspapers and directly lobbying politicians.”

“That was the first time Malta had a pro-legalisation voice on all local media. Activists in LIM moved to create ReLeaf later on which is until this very day the most vocal pro-legalisation lobby group in Malta.”

While David can never be sure of the long-term effects his organising had done, he believes it’s “inevitable to notice that LIM was the seed of it all, pun intended”.

He also believes the group may have, inadvertently, led to the Labour Party picking up cannabis as a social issue they wanted to push.

“The Labour Party used Cambridge Analytica in their 2013 election,” David said. “With their quasi-military crowd-manipulation tech, I’m quite convinced that the large numbers joining the LIM Facebook group (the group has over 20,000 members today) and the high activity on its pages could have been flagged by their algorithm and placed cannabis laws on top of the party agenda.”

Either way, with the court case finally behind him and the government going beyond what many activists had even hoped – though a promised new cannabis social club industry has yet to materialise – David is left in two minds.

“I am naturally averse to injustice and quite vocal on various other social issues,” he concluded.  “I’m still unsure if I just want to put all of this behind me and forget about it, or put my aversion to injustice to good use. Maybe it’s time to join the only political group which ever made sense on these islands, i.e. Moviment Graffiti?”

“Oh, and I have one question for the government – what happened to those cannabis social clubs?”

Do you think people dragged through Maltese courts for a lengthy time period should be compensated? Sound off in the comments below