Security bill, crackdown on light cannabis. Coldiretti: the entire sector at risk. Ok to bodycam for police forces

The Chamber of Deputies' consideration of the security bill is postponed until after the summer recess. The examination in the Constitutional Affairs and Justice commissions will be closed between this and next week. This was decided by the conference of group leaders in Montecitorio after the night session in the commissions. Dem Braga: 'Moments of strong tension even in the face of intimidation and threats against us'. The amendment on bodycam for police officers was approved. 'Thanks to this tool we will make the protection of women and men in uniform even more effective,' said Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi. And here comes the clampdown on light cannabis that, in fact, equates it to non-light cannabis. It is, commented Riccardo Magi, a 'hard blow to the sector that employs thousands of people and has a completely Italian supply chain'. Instead, the Lega's proposal to ban the image of the hemp plant for advertising purposes has been withdrawn.

The amendment approved in committee, which will only go into effect after the final approval of the measure (at first reading in the Chamber) proposes to intervene in the law to support the hemp industry for industrial use, with a Thc content of less than 0.2%. The aim is to 'prevent that the assumption of products from hemp inflorescence may favour, through alterations in the psychophysical state of the absorbing subject, behaviour that endangers public safety or road safety'. It is therefore prohibited to cultivate and sell inflorescences, including cannabis with a low THC content, for uses other than those expressly indicated in the law itself, and therefore the permitted industrial uses. The trade or sale of inflorescences is punished with the rules of the Consolidated Law on Narcotic Drugs, thus putting light cannabis on an equal footing with non-light cannabis.

Hard on the opposition's heels in the committee for the forced steps on a measure that does not have the urgency of a decree. "Valentina D'Orso and Alfonso Colucci, leaders of the M5s group in the committee, said: "From the time limitation we pass to silencing the oppositions - after a further acceleration decided by the presidency - so at night the majority approves its repressive and liberticidal norms of the security bill with the favour of darkness and without the 'annoyance' of the oppositions that nail them to their paucity. A new disgrace signed by FdI, Lega and FI'. A 'dangerous precedent' even for the Dems. During the night,' it is reported, 'the announced rewording of the amendments by the majority and the opposition to allow police officers to wear bodycams also arrived.

'The clampdown on light cannabis equated to non-light cannabis puts at risk the survival of an entire sector engaged in a cultivation where significant investments have been made'. This was stated by Coldiretti. In fact, the inflorescence of hemp, Coldiretti points out, represents a fundamental part of the plant's added value, and banning its harvesting and drying risks the collapse of an entire sector where many young farmers are engaged. Coldiretti had repeatedly expressed the need for protections for farmers who produce hemp in full legality, as also recognised by European regulations, also in order to respond to sectors such as nutriceuticals, cosmetics, industry or furniture. Now a sector that employs thousands of people and about 4,000 cultivated hectares is being put at risk, even blocking exports that represent a large slice of the Italian market.

'A serious defeat for free enterprise in Italy. A fast-growing sector, driven above all by young farmers, has thus been blocked'. This is how the president of Cia-Agricoltori Italiani, Cristiano Fini, commented the night vote, with which the government hit the most valuable part of the agro-industrial sector of extraction hemp, based on the production of cannabidiol derivatives (Cbd), used for uses widely recognised by European regulations, from cosmetics to herbal medicine, from food supplements to floriculture. According to Cia, the supply chain of legal hemp producers, which accounts for thousands of jobs and about 500 million euros in annual turnover, is going up in smoke.