According to a statement released this Monday on the official website of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, the president stated that, without distinction, “drugs are all bad, it is a phenomenon out of control,” and assured “the government will not look to the other side.”
The Italian ruler faced questions from opposition politicians, as was the case of Riccardo Magi, deputy for the More Europe party, defender of marihuana legalization, who showed a poster stating “Cannabis, if the State does not deal with it, it will occupy the mafia”.
Meloni argued “they said making the use of some substances less transgressive for young people would decrease their diffusion, but that did not happen. Cannabis use among students and addictions are increasingly widespread among the youngest”, and she lamented “the propaganda pushes consumption”.
The Prime Minister added “these substances are becoming more and more aggressive, we never talk about this. In a joint today there is an amount of active principle enormously greater than the same joint twenty or thirty years ago. Can something that has more than 70% active ingredients really be defined as light? she wondered herself.
“The season of laxity and indifference is over” in the face of the “uncontrolled” phenomenon of marijuana, she emphasized.
The seizure of drugs in Italy during the past year stood at around 75 tons, with a decrease of 19.17 percent compared to the previous year, but those of cocaine grew to record levels, according to the so-called White Paper, an independent report on consumption, drug addiction and drug trafficking.
This analysis, which as every year was presented before the Italian Parliament on June 26, on occasion of the World Day against Drugs, shows that cocaine shipments seized in 2022 totaled 26.10 tons, a figure never before recorded.
The operations and complaints before the judicial authority showed a decrease of 10.54 and 12.12 percent respectively, with 19 thousand 198 in the first case and 26 thousand 685 in the second, an average lower than that of the last decade, adds the document, based on data from the Central Directorate of Anti-Drug Services of the Ministry of the Interior.
“Drug trafficking continues to be the main source of income for criminal organizations” in Italy, which “confirms itself as a strategic crossing point in the context of global cocaine supply flows,” adds that study that refers to “Ecuador, Brazil and Guatemala as main supplier countries”.
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