Cannabis in Italy

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Graffiti in Venice
1881 advertisement for cannabis cigarettes in Bergamo

Cannabis in Italy is illegal for recreational uses, but legal for limited medical uses since 2013.

Enforcement[edit]

Possession of small amounts for personal use is a misdemeanor subject to fines and the suspension of documents (passports and/or drivers licenses). The sale of cannabis products is illegal and punishable by imprisonment; cultivation is likewise punishable by imprisonment, even if in small amounts and for exclusive personal use. Licensed cultivation for medical and industrial use is strictly regulated.[1]

Medical cannabis[edit]

In 2013, Italy legalized cannabis as a prescribed medication.[2]

Industrial hemp[edit]

A 1914 USDA report notes:

The highest-priced hemp fiber in the markets of either America or Europe is produced in Italy,1 but it is obtained from plants similar to those in Kentucky. The higher price of the fiber is due not to superior plants, but to water retting and to increased care and labor in the preparation of the fiber.

Four varieties are cultivated in Italy:

  • (1) "Bologna," or great hemp, called in France "chanvrede Piedmont," is grown in northern Italy in the provinces of Bologna, Ferrara, Roviga,
  • (2) "Cannapa picola," small hemp, attaining a height of 4 to 7 feet, with a rather slender reddish stalk, is cultivated in the valley of the Arno in the department of Tuscany.'
  • (3) "Neapolitan," large seeded.
  • (4) "Neapolitan," small seeded.

The two varieties of Neapolitan hemp are cultivated in the vicinity of Naples, and even so far up on the sides of Vesuvius that fields of hemp are occasionally destroyed by the eruptions of that volcano.[3]

External links[edit]

References[edit]