Italy plans to restrict nascent 'cannabis light' industry

By Francesca Piscioneri and Crispian Balmer

Italy's flourishing "cannabis light" industry risks being uprooted this year when Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni pushes a bill through parliament to deflower a crop that is legal across much of Europe.

The looming legislation is part of a broad range of measures being introduced by Meloni's arch-conservative coalition, looking to burnish its credentials as the defender of public morality and traditional social structures.

While marijuana production is illegal in Italy, parliament eight years ago authorised trade in hemp, a cannabis variety which is grown for its industrial and non-psychoactive uses.

Meloni's government says the 2016 law was too lax and wants to ban any product deriving from the hemp flower, infuriating local entrepreneurs who say the move could cost thousands of jobs and imperil millions of euros of investments.

"It's absurd that a state which put Italian businesses to work by starting a legitimate supply chain now wants to shut it all down," said Alessio Amicone, who founded a company that grows and sells cannabis products called Canapando.

"They are waging a war on a substance that is not a drug," he told Reuters.

Hemp contains very low levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), meaning it can't make you high unlike marijuana, which comes from a separate variety of the cannabis family.

By contrast, it contains higher concentrations of cannabidiol (CBD), known for its potential therapeutic effects, such as reducing anxiety, pain, and inflammation, which mainly derives from the inflorescence -- the flowering part.

But the government's anti-drug department likens products made from the flower to recreational drugs, saying in a statement they "could pose risks to public safety or road safety". As a result, it has decided to ban their sale.

Producers contest this, saying the aromatic flowers have a negligible psychotropic component - one that affects how the brain works - and are a vital ingredient for their supply chain that spans food, textiles and cosmetics.

The hemp lobby Federcanapa says 70%-80% of the income from hemp cultivation is derived from the flower.

"Producing without the inflorescence is like saying you can only grow wheat by decapitating the ear. What sense does that make from an economic perspective?" said Stefano Masini, head of the environment unit at Italy's farming lobby Coldiretti.

ILLIBERAL DRIFT

The proposed flower ban is included in a broader security decree that combines an array of disparate measures, including a clampdown on demonstrations, squats and sit-ins, as well as tough new curbs on prison protests.

It has already been approved by the lower house of parliament and is now before the upper house Senate.

Critics say the bill is part of an illiberal drift in Italy under Meloni, who has reserved her most radical action during her two years in office on social issues, such as her recent criminalisation of surrogacy parenthood.

The problem lies with the ambivalent way the original 2016 law was written, the government says. It sanctioned the sale of "cannabis light", but stipulated that it should not be smoked or eaten. The law makes no specific mention of the flowers.

As a result, the flower is often packaged as a "collector item" that should not be consumed -- a ruse that fools no-one. The government wants to end this legal grey area.

"The government's amendment is absolutely necessary," said Augusta Montaruli, a member of Meloni's Brothers of Italy party who has championed the bill in parliament.

"If anyone was hoping to operate within legal uncertainty, that's not possible with us," she told Reuters.

The government's hard line makes no sense to CBD advocates, who say the compound helps take the edge off stress, giving you a gentle buzz, without getting you stoned.

"Cannabis light contains a very small amount of the active ingredient in marijuana. It has no psychotropic effect. It is used for pain relief, relaxation, and as an anxiolytic," said Andrea Crisanti, a well-known virologist and senator for the opposition Democratic Party.

The decision to remove the flower from the cannabis supply chain was "shameful" and devoid of scientific logic, he said.

Hemp cultivation has been approved by the European Union and it is grown across the continent, including in neighbours France and Switzerland. Germany went one step further in February by joining Malta and Luxembourg in legalising marijuana use.

Raffaele Desiante, head of the Italian Hemp Entrepreneurs group, said there are some 3,000 Italian companies operating in the sector, with 10,000 full-time employees and annual turnover of around 500 million euros.

Roughly 90% of the Italian product is exported, he says.

The government argues that the industrial hemp supply chain need not be affected by banning the use of the flower, but those working in the sector, such as Silvio Saraceni, the owner of a cannabis light shop, says it would be economic suicide.

Based in Rome's Garbatella neighbourhood, where Meloni grew up, Saraceni says flower products make up "at least" half of his sales. "We feel like we're holding our breath, unable to think about the future or investments because we are in total uncertainty," he said.