Italy to reverse Far-Right anti-drug laws
Author: Jonty Skrufff
Friday, June 23, 2006
Italy’s new centrist government announced this week that they’re to amend draconian drug laws introduced by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in April, just weeks before he lost the election by a narrow majority.
The so called ‘Fini-Giovanardi law’ imposed harsh mandatory prison sentences and seizure of passports and driving licences for people caught with tiny quantities of any drugs and were introduced over two years after Berlusconi protégé, Ginafranco Fini, first proposed the laws on moral grounds.
“Taking drugs is not an innocuous exercise of freedoms that can’t be curbed,” the neo-fascist leader declared in 2003. “But a rejection of the most elementary duties of the individual towards the various communities in which he or she actually lives.” (The Guardian)
Italy’s new Welfare Minister Paulo Ferrero pledged to re-introduce laws aimed at differentiating between different drugs and stopping cannabis arrests in general, as well as making drug consumption ‘a non penal infraction’.
"We do not know what act we will issue yet, but it must cause a reduction of damage with respect to the current law,” the Minister said, “"There will then be a comprehensive modification . . . through which there will be a clear separation of light drugs from heavy drugs.” (Agencia Giornalistica Italiana (AGI).)
Under Berlusconi’s present laws, users face between six and 20 years in jail if caught with just 5 grams of marijuana and 0.75 grams of MDMA (5 ecstasy tablets), similar dealer/ user demarcations to those recently proposed by Tony Blair’s Labour administration in the UK.
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