Ever higher active ingredient in cannabis - Mantovano (4)

(ANSA) - ROME, OCT 1 - Cannabis available in Italy has an increasingly high active ingredient and the concentration of THC has risen from 1-2% 40 years ago to 25% last year, Cabinet Secretary Alfredo Mantovano told the parliamentary commission on childhood Tuesday illustrating government action against use of the drug.
    "Already just 1% can cause serious effects on a subject in developmental age," he stressed.
    "Extreme caution must therefore be used in defining a substance that has 25% of active ingredient as light: it is like saying that half a litre of beer is equal to half a litre of grappa".
    In 2023, Mantovano told the panel, the consumption of narcotic substances exceeded pre-pandemic levels and 516 thousand students (34% of those between 15 and 17 years old) reported having consumed a substance at least once, while 4.5% use it frequently.
    Mantovano went on to criticise rapper Sfera Ebbasta for promoting the use of cannabis.
    "It is certainly not light and does not relax, the marijuana that Sfera Ebbasta sings about, who boasts about its use ("I smoke weed in large quantities") and exalts it as in the song 'Notti' ("you know that I don't do it for fashion, more than anything out of need, that I need this stuff to not go back to the bottom").
    "It is not light because at the bottom of a nightclub, the Lanterna Azzurra in Corinaldo (Ancona) on December 8, 2018, 5 teenagers and a mother fell without getting up just as they were waiting for this rapper to arrive (in a deadly crush).
    "The rapper was far from the nightclub, so no criminalization for the specific episode that was caused by a group of young people who had used pepper spray to commit robberies". (ANSA).