Daily Times

Rome: Italy’s Constitutional Court on Wednesday rejected a request to hold a referendum on legalizing cannabis cultivation despite a corresponding petition garnering a large number of signatures.

The referendum proposal sought to legalize the growing of cannabis for personal use and ease sanctions on other related crimes, with offenders no longer risking prison sentences for selling small amounts of the drug.

Constitutional Court president and former prime minister, Giuliano Amato, told a news conference that the referendum would have been sufficient “to make (Italy) violates multiple international obligations.”

One of the advocates for liberalization — Benedetto Della Vedova of the centrist + Europa party — countered that the court’s ruling would “deprive Italy of a public debate and of a process of electoral reform on freedom and responsibility.”

The organizers of the planned referendum had garnered more than 630,000 signatures, arguing that cannabis was no more dangerous than other legal substances like tobacco or alcohol. And liberalizing the law would have eased overcrowding in prisons, they said.

Currently, the penalty for growing cannabis is a prison sentence of between two and six years. Opponents of the referendum, including the head of the anti-immigration far-right League party, Matteo Salvini, argued that liberalization would encourage the use of both soft and hard drugs.