(Teleborsa) - While the legalization of cannabis is being discussed, so much so that yesterday the president of the anti-corruption authority Raffaele Cantone also spoke, defining himself in favor of an "intelligent legalization", in Italy there is already a boom in the cultivation of cannabis in the “sativa” type, commonly called hemp, which is a close relative of the "indica" type from a botanical point of view and is making a strong comeback in the countryside with over 300 companies for an area of at least 1000 hectares. This is what emerges from an analysis by Coldiretti which shows that the soil and climatic conditions of the Peninsula are particularly favorable to cultivation from Puglia to Piedmont, from Veneto to Basilicata, but also in Friuli VG Sicily and Sardinia.
If the experimental cultivations and those made for therapeutic purposes of "indica" cannabis have given good results, a real boom has occurred in Italy for the "sativa" one driven by multiple market opportunities that this particularly versatile cultivation offers and from which we obtain from fabrics to building materials, but also oil, paints, soaps, waxes, cosmetics, detergents, paper, packaging but also pasta and beer. It is actually, notes the Association that represents Italian agriculture, a return for a cultivation that until the 40s was more than familiar in Italy, so much so that the beautiful country with almost 100 thousand hectares was the second largest producer of hemp in the world (behind only the Soviet Union).
The decline came from the progressive industrialization and the advent of the "economic boom" which imposed synthetic fibers on the market, but also from the international campaign against drugs which cast a shadow on this plant. The Italian government in 1961 signed an international convention called "Single Convention on Narcotic Substances" (followed by those of 1971 and 1988), in which hemp should have disappeared from the world within 25 years of its entry into force while in 1975 the "Cossiga law" against narcotics came out, and in the following years the last hectares hemp disappear.
Today the institutions are aware of thethe need to create a less rigid legislative framework that can enhance the distinctive characteristics of Italian hemp with new rules being examined by Parliament.
