Since 2006, Italy's prisons have been bursting with marijuana prisoners due to harsher penalties. Now a constitutional court in Rome has overturned that law, which equated marijuana possession with heroin and cocaine, increasing sentences significantly - from two to six years for sales, cultivation and trafficking to six to 20 years. Italy's jails are so overcrowded that 10,000 prisoners on pot charges may soon be released.
"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," say Franco Corleone from the human rights group, Society of Reason.
Possession of small amounts of marijuana in Italy is prohibited, but tolerated. "Cops are very relaxed in Italy," webehigh.com reports. "They will approach you if you are smoking in their face, but as long as you’re in a crowded piazza, or in your home, they don’t care at all. They're too busy flirting with girls and smoking cigarettes."
Last month, the Turin City Council voted to do what the court did, overruling the Fini-Giovanardi drug law instituted by the conservative Berlusconi's government in 2006. It also approved the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes in the Northern Italy city near the French border.
