The cannabis scene in Italy is changing quickly. As many as 1,000 shops selling low-THC, high-CBD products have appeared in major cities over the past few years, but cannabis is still definitely illegal: While possession is decriminalized and is punishable by a fine and some paperwork, sales can result in a six-year prison term and a 75,000 euro fine. <\/p>\n
But let\u2019s say you want to grow a little pot at home. That\u2019s apparently now OK, though you might not find permission outlined in any law on the books. Permission to cultivate was instead granted recently by the country\u2019s Supreme Court, which ruled on Dec. 19 that \u201csmall amounts grown domestically for the exclusive use of the grower\u201d are perfectly acceptable. <\/p>\n
As Reuters reported<\/a>, the ruling apparently went unnoticed for more than a week before it touched off some intense (and maybe a bit histrionic) debate among lawmakers on Friday. (The left is good with it, the right hates it, the middle is a little worried about going too fast!) But what makes the ruling the hook for a trend piece is the fact that it\u2019s the latest in a recent string of drug-policy reform victories won via the courts \u2014 which is maybe how it always should have been.<\/p>\n Last year, it was Mexico\u2019s Supreme Court that ruled<\/a> that the country\u2019s ban on recreational cannabis was unconstitutional, violating the very document upon which the state is based<\/a>. In that instance, it was the fifth such ruling on cannabis, which in Mexico means a legal precedent is created upon which lawmakers are compelled to act. In the cannabis case, when those lawmakers didn\u2019t act, choosing instead to dither and stall, it was the same Supreme Court that ordered lawmakers to act<\/a> and amend national law to explicitly allow adults to possess cannabis without fear of prosecution. <\/p>\n How or why did the courts do this? In Mexico, the courts Judges are given some limited discretion as to how to interpret the law, but have significant leeway via an ambiguous but very useful clause: \u201cin the interest of justice,\u201d<\/a> a sort of catch-all, \u201cf*ck it, we\u2019re out\u201d emergency exit that allows either a prosecutor or a judge to end a prosecution. But even if a conviction in a cannabis case was won, a judge still had leeway to punish \u2014 or not punish \u2014 the offender accordingly. It was only after the imposition of mandatory minimums<\/a> that courtrooms became halls of horrors for cannabis defendants. <\/p>\n With a handful of exceptions, in the United States, legalization and medical marijuana access have been won with the popular vote, with ballot initiatives. It was this way because certain lawmakers among us decided that demonizing and prohibiting (certain) drugs and disenfranchising and imprisoning their users was an effective technique to grab and hold onto power. And when the laws weren\u2019t punitive enough, or when judges were too lenient, lawmakers took away the courts\u2019 discretion with mandatory minimums, baking the punishment into the statute outlining the crime. There are many examples of justices who ruled against what a reasonable person might view as the just cause because doing so would violate a law they nonetheless deplored<\/a>.<\/p>\n However, at least recently, what the courts have done is interpret voter or legislator-initiated laws to mean that citizens are generally allowed more cannabis access than law enforcement or regulators allowed. In Colorado, the state Supreme Court ruled<\/a> that drug-sniffing dogs can\u2019t be deployed until there\u2019s suspicion of a crime \u2014 a dog\u2019s mere alert is not enough.<\/p>\n And a federal appeals court ruled<\/a> that a case challenging cannabis\u2019s position in the Controlled Substances Act can proceed \u2014 a procedural victory, but validating nonetheless. Many strict rules imposed on Florida medical marijuana patients and businesses by the state legislature or state regulators, including a ban on smoked cannabis, have been tossed out<\/a> by the courts. Dabs and other cannabis concentrates were made explicitly lega<\/a>l by that state\u2019s Supreme Court.<\/p>\n What\u2019s going on here? Is the bench stuffed with pot-loving In many jurisdictions in the United States, judges are political appointees. Where they\u2019re not, they\u2019re elected, but in either case, it\u2019s exceedingly difficult to remove a judge once they\u2019re seated. You could make the argument that judges are inclined to rule towards cannabis reform because that\u2019s what the people want, but a judge legislating from the bench might find themselves the target of a recall effort or ethics complaint \u2014 and no amount of challenges have managed to undo federal prohibition, which remains Congress\u2019s will and thus the law of the land. <\/p>\n At the same time, when the issue has arisen, it\u2019s the courts that interpret<\/em> the will of the voters and the will of the people. If voters in Florida want legal medical marijuana, they probably mean they also want to smoke it, because that\u2019s what people do. If medical cannabis is legal in Arizona, and the voter initiative doesn\u2019t say \u201cbut not concentrates,\u201d it means medical cannabis concentrates are legal. In this way, the courts aren\u2019t so much a guiding light but a helping hand \u2014 and that\u2019s more than can be said for some lawmakers.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong> how do The post Cannabis\u2019s Unlikely Friend in the Fight for Reform: The Courts<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The cannabis scene in Italy is changing quickly. As many as 1,000 shops selling low-THC, high-CBD products have appeared in major cities over the past few years, but cannabis is still definitely illegal: While possession is decriminalized and is punishable by a fine and some paperwork, sales can result inContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,331,1366,90,265],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40471"}],"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\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40471"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40472,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40471\/revisions\/40472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nwere ruling on a series of legal challenges brought by citizens and argued by
\nlawyers. This is how the law is supposed to work \u2014 and this is how it\u2019s worked,
\nto some degree, in the United States, though without any epochal, Brown vs.
\nBoard of Education<\/em>-worthy revolutions on the cannabis question.<\/p>\n
\nfreaks? Unlikely \u2014 just as unlikely as a world in which judges are bending to
\nthe will of the people. <\/p>\n
\nyou think cannabis should be legalized?<\/p>\n
\n
\nRead More: Cannabis\u2019s Unlikely Friend in the Fight for Reform: The Courts<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"