A prisoner puts his arm through the door of his cell in the historic Regina Coeli or Queen of Heaven jail in Rome. (Tony Gentile/Reuters)
Italy’s constitutional court on Wednesday struck down the country’s marijuana law which tripled sentences for selling, growing or possessing cannabis. The law has been blamed for prison overcrowding in the country.
The court ruled that the law, passed in 2006 by Silvio Berlusconi’s conservative government, was “illegitimate,” without going into details, reports Steve Scherer at MSN News. Some estimates suggest 10,000 people could be released from Italian jails, which are the most overcrowded in the European Union.
The prison rights group Antigone says the harsh drug law was the biggest reason for Italy’s prison overcrowding problem. According to the group, 40 percent of all inmates in Italian prisons are serving sentences for drug crimes.
About 62,000 inmates are crammed into cells built for fewer than 48,000, according to official data.
The 2006 drug law classified marijuana and hashish as equal, legally, to cocaine and heroin. It boosted sentences for cannabis cultivation, sale and trafficking from 2-6 years to 6-20 years.
The drug law previously in place will now take effect after the court’s ruling. Crimes related to hard drugs like cocaine and heroin will once again carry longer prison sentences than cannabis.
Neither the old law, nor the new one, made it a crime to consume marijuana, but both outlawed its possession.
“The so-called Drug War as conceived in North America has been lost and it’s time to return to rational rules that distinguish between substances,” said Franco Corleone of the human rights group Society of Reason, repots Reuters.
One of the conservative lawmakers responsible for the harsh 2006 drug law predicted doom. The ruling was a “devastating choice from a scientific viewpoint and in the message it sends to young people that some drugs are less dangerous than others,” said Senator Carlo Giovanardi. We can’t be telling kids the actual facts about cannabis, now can we, Senator?
Italy: Harsh Marijuana Law Dumped
Article by Steve Elliott for Hemp News