A drug-taking tip from Italy’s agriculture minister went viral when he scoffed at “cannabis light” and said that if you were going to smoke a joint, “do it right”.
Giorgia Meloni’s hard-Right government is considering banning so-called “cannabis light”, a weaker form of the drug containing less than 0.5 per cent of the psychoactive compound THC that has been legal in Italy for production and sale since 2019.
During a rally on Monday ahead of this weekend’s European Parliament elections, a journalist handed Francesco Lollobrigida, the agriculture minister, a “cannabis light” joint and asked him if he would like to try.
“No, light, no. If you’re going to smoke a joint, do it right,” said Mr Lollobrigida.
The minister, a member of Ms Meloni’s hard-Right Brothers of Italy party and her brother-in-law, had just stated his opposition to the widespread cultivation of cannabis.
“I don’t plan to transform our fields of grain, our crops, into fields of cannabis light,” he told the La7 television journalist.
“On the contrary, I think we can survive without it.”
Potential ban
Ms Meloni’s coalition government is considering an amendment to a security bill currently under discussion in parliament that would ban the sale of the weaker cannabis, according to Italian news reports.
The far-Right League party of Matteo Salvini, a coalition member, has reportedly filed its own amendment that would forbid images of cannabis in advertising, punishable by up to two years in jail and a €20,000 (£17,000) fine.
Riccardo Magi, the secretary-general of the centrist More Europe party, responded to Mr Lollobrigida’s comment on X, saying “it’s better to make it legal. And millions of Italians think the same as I do”.
Mr Lollobrigida also made headlines two weeks ago over light-hearted comments to a television reporter, defending “conviviality” as a vehicle for peace.
He asked: “How important it is to be at the table, to discuss, to reason, to drink a glass of wine, to converse. How many wars could have been avoided over a well-organised dinner?”