Legal green light for the sale of hemp flowers in Italy

The Regional Administrative Court (TAR) of Lazio, an Italian region, has annulled the decree on medicinal plants. which limited hemp production to seeds and fibres. This decision authorizes the effective use of the entire hemp plant in Italy.

«The national legislation of each Member State may restrict the use of parts of the plant only if such a restriction is strictly necessary to protect the right to public health,» reads the decision.

Lawyer Giacomo Bulleri, who defended the case, commented on it for CanapaIndustriale In other words, in cases such as the one in question, it is necessary for the administration to provide an adequate explanation of the priority requirements of health protection and precaution, by providing scientific data demonstrating the actual existence of a risk arising from the cultivation of hemp plants in their entirety (i.e. seeds, seed derivatives, leaves and inflorescences from which resin has been extracted)».

Now that the decree has been annulled, the relevant ministries will have to rework the text. In the meantime, the ban on hemp being sold as herbal medicine, and potentially its registration as a smoking product, are technically null and void.

Protective measures would nevertheless be needed to safeguard the sector and work completely within the law.

«The satisfaction was to make a court understand for the first time what the hemp regulatory system is, which the TAR showed it had grasped with an award substantially in line with that of the French Conseil d'Etat,» emphasizes Bulleri at Canapaindustriale.

The TAR specifically cited both the recent decision by the French Conseil d'Etat, which effectively legalized the trade of CBD and cannabis light in France, and the sentence of the European Court of Justice which stressed that legal CBD products from one member state must be able to circulate freely throughout Europe.

Regarding the fact that hemp can be used in its entirety, he writes that: «It is not possible to infer any distinction between the parts of the hemp plant that are freely cultivated, in accordance with the cited law n. 242/2016, which can be used for the purposes established by the law itself. In fact, the sectoral discipline of international and Community origin specifies that the discretionary criterion for establishing the free cultivation of hemp lies in the type of plant, considered as a whole».

Ministries attempting to restrict the use of hemp flowers had also invoked the «precautionary principle», without providing any evidence to support the scientific uncertainty surrounding the safety of hemp leaves and flowers.