On the 15th of December, the “End of the Prohibitionist World” Network has held in Rome a national meeting, in preparation of the ruling by the Constitutional Court relatively to the law concerning illegal drugs, named after the authors that conceived it, Mr. Fini and Mr.Giovanardi and being scheduled on the 11th of February.

On the 8th of February we are going to take the streets in Rome because

Right or wrong it can’t be a crime!

Let’s cultivate the future!

It has been a very intense meeting with many groups ranging from Social Centers to harm reduction operators,NGOs and several persons coming from institutional organizations.

During the past eight years when the Fini/Giovanardi Law has been applied, tens of thousands of persons have been arrested, badly overcrowding the state prisons and accumulating thousands of years of jail-time, while the economic costs for maintaining the repressive and judicial apparatus skyrocketed.

In the meantime the Mafia could just thank everybody for the exponential growth of the highly profitable business on illegal drugs; sadly after too many persecutions and casualties, too many deaths are still looking for some truth.

The combination of the two laws on drugs and immigration, have provoked a row of legal proceedings, turning the Italian prison conditions into an permanent emergency and a national scandal, putting the country completely out of the European standards.

No other country in Europe has so many detainees for drug related charges. The heavy criminalization of drug users clashes with the impunity that our juridical system instead grants to those who commit much worse crimes, really harming the fabric of the entire society, as the categories of people to be identified and prosecuted had already been decided because of some stigma factor. The situation relative to our penal institutions made the European Union reproach Italy, just months before the country is going to be chairing the Council of the European Union showing however some terrible guiltiness credentials for not respecting some basic human rights. It’s a matter of time before some very costly and well deserved fines will be sent to Rome!


For many years, all this happened under a crooked, distorted and expensive covert made by the Anti-Drug Policies Department (DPA), an agency directly controlled by the Presidency of the Council and not by a more appropriate Public Department such as the Health, Justice or Social Affairs ones. The DPA is falsely claiming, that Italy’s drug users are not being punished at all and are instead taken care of; it also opposes to most harm reduction policies, even acting at an international level. It promotes a bio-medical and pathological model aggregating all drug uses, assimilating all illegal substances and all consumption modalities together. After the fall of the centre-right government, originally dictating such law, none of the two following governments has ever bothered to lift a finger in order to alleviate such a dramatic situation.

Finally, today, something seems to be moving…it looks like this system could be stopped.

Since January several tribunals and the Supreme Court of Cassation as well, have suspended most of the proceedings and have sent the law back to be re-examined by the Board because of its blatant unconstitutionality. Just few days ago, we were acknowledged that the discussion will be held on the 11th of February by the Constitutional Court.

The main objections under scrutiny will be relative to the way the law was made operative, as it was originally approved through a decree regarding a completely different matter (the winter olympic games of Torino in 2006) and not having any real urgency reason supporting it rather than having been discussed in the Parliament as it should have been; should this not be enough, by equiparating the penalties for hard and soft drugs, it also violates the European norms.

We all know very clearly that, should the Constitutional Court abolish the Fini/Giovanardi Law, this will represent a unique chance opening a completely new scenery.

We therefore think that it is now necessary to call to action as many individuals, groups, activists, patients and structures as possible, together with all the organizations that have been fighting for so many years for the repeal of this awful law, gathering together all the forces with a big demonstration that will be held in Rome on the 8th of February. We want to build up a common/shared path, starting it right from the people, highlighting the harms caused by the current law so far and aspiring for it to become the main drive for the decisions soon to be taken by the Constitutional Court.
We’re asking to everyone to subscribe and disseminate this Manifesto and to organize the mobilization in all the territories, informing and promoting fund gathering initiatives supporting the participation to the demonstration; lots of geographical pinpoints are going to be collected on a map, enabling everyone to find close people alike wishing to come to Rome by organizing a common trip, offering spare seats or renting shared vehicles together.

We are firmly determined not to pay anymore the cost of ideological and repressive laws with our lives and our rights as those same laws are instead empowering the multi-million business firmly in the hands of the Mafia drug lords; we are not willing anymore to witness the prisons being fulfilled with users that, according to that criminal pathogenic theorem so beloved by the prohibitionist propaganda, are instantly transformed into dangerous individuals, not just for themselves but also for the whole community and that so deserve to be punished and corrected and that are considered mentally ill criminals as well. We are not anymore willing to attend to the persecution even of ill people craving for Cannabis simply because of the beneficial therapeutic effects.

We are not any longer willing to let people die in jails because of this infamous law.

The time has come to further advance over, starting by fully decriminalizing personal cannabis usage and home grown cultivations: it already happened and is happening right now in more and more countries in the world.

On the 8th of February we are going to take the streets in Rome because

Right or wrong it can’t be a crime!

Let’s cultivate the future!

For info and registration

[adesioni@leggeillegale.org

 >adesioni@leggeillegale.org]

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