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The provincial city of Cosenza, at the southern tip of Italy\u2019s boot, is hardly one of the country\u2019s metropolitan centers. But, amidst the town\u2019s narrow streets, several low-THC cannabis shops are open for business.<\/p>\n
One of the most prominent is\u00a0Cicileu<\/a>, just a block off the Corso Mazzini, Cosenza\u2019s main drag and pedestrian mall. It\u00a0opened\u00a0in April 2018, taking its name from the slang word for getting high in a regional dialect (celebrated in songs<\/a>\u00a0by local reggae and rap bands) \u2014 even though the stuff on sale there doesn\u2019t actually get you high.<\/p>\n But beautiful and fragrant buds are in open display, each in a sealed package marked with the percentage of THC and CBD, all within legal limits that restrict the amount of THC to 0.6%. There is also a perfunctory note on the display cases saying that samples are for \u201ccollection\u201d and \u201cornamental\u201d use. There are also bottles of CBD-infused olive oil, wines and liqueurs, and packages of hemp pasta.<\/p>\n Cicileu co-owner Antonio Agovino says wryly, \u201cWe can market it thanks to a legislative hole. There is no law that says you can sell it, but none that says that you can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n But this loophole has led to some turbulent times. In the spring, when Italy\u2019s then-Deputy Prime Minister and\u00a0de facto<\/em>\u00a0leader Matteo Salvini went on an anti-cannabis tirade, Agovino shut the shop to be safe. When Salvini was ousted this September, Agovino reopened the shop. He\u2019s now among the country\u2019s hopeful that a more permissive cannabis climate could be around the corner.<\/p>\n Throughout this summer, Matteo Salvini served as Italy\u2019s far-right\u00a0de facto<\/em>\u00a0leader. When it came to cannabis, Salvini was seen as the figure standing in the way of any progress toward legalization in the country. Now, following a government shake-up in late August<\/a>, he is gone \u2014 and legalization advocates have been swift to react.<\/p>\n Enza Bruno Bossio, a lawmaker with the center-left\u00a0Democratic Party, one of the two partners of the new coalition government,\u00a0said last week\u00a0that the way is now cleared to press the legalization question, according to Italian website Droghe.<\/p>\n Hailing the end of what she called \u201csalviniano<\/em>\u00a0obscurantism,\u201d she said there may be sufficient \u201cnumbers in parliament\u201d for a cannabis legalization law. \u201cWe can now open a discussion in the light of the new red and yellow majority,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cRed\u201d is a reference to her own party, while \u201cyellow\u201d refers to the fuzzy populists of the\u00a0Five Star Movement, Salvini\u2019s former coalition partners \u2014 who remain the wild card on the issue. Five Star spoke initially spoke in favor of legalization, then flipped when it joined Salvini in power. It remains to be seen if the party will return to its libertarian roots, at least on this issue.<\/p>\n Italy\u2019s right-wing governments have sought to tighten up a moderately tolerant cannabis policy since 1993, when Italian voters\u00a0approved a referendum\u00a0decriminalizing personal possession of all drugs. But cultivation and sale have remained criminal charges.<\/p>\n Italy\u2019s Constitutional Court in 2014\u00a0struck down<\/a>\u00a0a 2006 drug law that jacked up sentences for selling, cultivating or trafficking cannabis from 2-4 years to 6-20.<\/p>\n But Salvini revived the clampdown effort upon taking power last June. This May, he\u00a0blustered<\/a>: \u201cFrom today, I\u2019ll go to war on cannabis street by street, shop by shop, neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city.\u201d<\/p>\n This was actually a reference to low-THC varieties, which are sold openly in shops across Italy \u2014 and don\u2019t get you high at all. Some smoke them for the CBD, others merely for the cachet of the experience.\u00a0<\/p>\n The European Union actually has a\u00a00.2% THC limit<\/a>\u00a0for legal hemp, lower than the 0.3% limit in the United States.\u00a0But for internal use within Italy,\u00a0Law 242\u00a0of 2016\u00a0establishes a 0.6% limit<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 still not enough for an intoxicating effect, but providing more flexibility in the available strains.<\/p>\n Days after Salvini\u2019s May proclamation, Italy\u2019s Supreme Court of Cassation, the highest judicial body in criminal cases,\u00a0ruled that selling cannabis or its derivatives is illegal<\/a>\u00a0despite Law 242.<\/p>\n This was\u00a0hailed as victory<\/a>\u00a0by Salvini. But he either didn\u2019t read the fine print, or was hoping that others wouldn\u2019t. The\u00a0text of the ruling<\/a>\u00a0contained a clear exception for \u201cagricultural\u201d varieties, and \u201cproducts that in practice have no drugging effect.\u201d<\/p>\n Contrary to the media buzz, the ruling actually didn\u2019t change a thing \u2014 and Italy\u2019s low-THC cannabis shops remain open. Some closed doors in response to Salvini\u2019s threats. But with his fall, they are now starting to re-open.<\/p>\n Agovino, the owner of Cicileu, has now re-opened his store, at the same location in Cosenza. He points with pride to a package marked \u201cThe Grandfather\u2019s Weed\u201d \u2014 in fashionable English. The package also sports a portrait of a rustic-looking old farmer with an impish expression and an outsized mustache. This is actually Agovino\u2019s real grandfather, who grows the 0.2% THC bud on his mountaintop farm.<\/p>\n Agovino says his\u00a0nonno<\/em>\u00a0has been growing cannabis for the past four years on the lands passed down in his family for generations, in the mountains west of Cosenza.<\/p>\n \u201cBefore that he was growing tomatoes, fruits, greens,\u201d he says, \u201cbut he smoked cannabis in Germany in his 20s, while working in a factory there.\u201d<\/p>\n The store sells 20 varieties, all grown in Italy \u2014 five from Calabria, several from Umbria, in central Italy. High-CBD strains are now being cultivated throughout Italy, including in greenhouses in the north, where the growing season is shorter.<\/p>\n The seed must come from within the EU, and only some 50 strains are approved.<\/p>\n \u201cIt can\u2019t even come from Switzerland,\u201d Agovino says. \u201cAnd you can\u2019t cross genetics.\u201d<\/p>\n But he says that low-THC varieties from Hungary produce higher THC levels in the better climate conditions of Calabria.<\/p>\n Even without much THC, in fact, Agovino says, \u201cPeople buy it to relax, for insomnia, to relieve anxiety. Many adults come here to not have to buy from the underworld.\u201d<\/p>\n Italy has had a medical marijuana program since 2014, but it is very tightly controlled. The cannabis is\u00a0grown by the military<\/a>\u00a0on a base near Florence, and registered users can only purchase one gram a month at a pharmacy. \u201cSo people have to go the street and buy illegal, because that\u2019s not enough,\u201d Agovino says.<\/p>\n Calabria\u2019s notorious crime machine, the \u2018Ndrangheta, used to grow lots of cannabis, but it largely switched to moving cocaine in the 1980s. Compacted illicit-market pot is now mostly coming in from Albania, across the Adriatic Sea, and Agovino says it often adulterated with methadone.<\/p>\n But legal production of low-THC strains is taking root fast. \u201cThere\u2019s been a huge explosion of cultivation in Calabria this year,\u201d Agovino says.\u00a0<\/p>\n And he\u2019s proud to be a part of the new economy. A former pipeline worker for Italy\u2019s ENI oil company, Agovino says he is much happier now. \u201cThis is my dream since I was a teenager.\u201d<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, have you ever tried cannabis from Italy?<\/p>\n The post Italy\u2019s New Government Could Legalize Cannabis<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The provincial city of Cosenza, at the southern tip of Italy\u2019s boot, is hardly one of the country\u2019s metropolitan centers. But, amidst the town\u2019s narrow streets, several low-THC cannabis shops are open for business. One of the most prominent is\u00a0Cicileu, just a block off the Corso Mazzini, Cosenza\u2019s main dragContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":38381,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,490,1366,687,81],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38380"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38382,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38380\/revisions\/38382"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Antoni-Thumbs-Up.jpg\")
Italy\u2019s New Leading Coalition<\/h4>\n
Futile Efforts at Clampdown\u00a0Under Salvini<\/h4>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Bag-of-Grandfather-Weed.jpg\")
<\/figure>\nAn Italian Grandfather\u2019s Weed<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: Italy\u2019s New Government Could Legalize Cannabis<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"