I think Saffrolette's post on Italy was extremely flawed. First of all the Church actually has a more progressive stance on drugs than most political parties, they are the reason why brothels and gay marriage aren't allowed but they didn't influence drug policy in the slightest, anyway they are officially against criminalizing users.
Also one thing about Italy is that enforcement of the laws is generally elastic. Italians are very outspoken and generally don't give two shits, I've seen people hoof ket and coke off their iphone screens outside clubs with police like ten metres away who were just standing there, smoking ciggarettes minding their own business. I mean compared with places like Sweden where they piss test you in clubs, in Italy in the nightlife areas on weekend everything goes, there's lot of police around, but there's scores of dealers doing their business just in front of them. The police will only, barely, intervene when somebody gets stabbed.
People are very open about use and actually in the past decade availability and quality has gone up remarkably, I mean a lot of things that weren't easily available before, like pure MDMA or crack are now everywhere.
Hello,first post,yes the police (and other kind of forces) are very elastic in Italy with people that consume low quantities of drugs but it depends from a lot of things
- Your age
- Quantity of drug you had with you (90% of time,excepts for few joints,if you have something with you ad they found it,they will came to your location/home to find more)
- Where are you : smoking joints inside of a club,open air parties etc it's not a problem for the police (but watch out the bouncers,if they find something they can beat the shit out of you,no matter what) ,if they catch you they just throw your things away,and maybe they will write down your personal details and nothing more. If they catch you smoking in some public areas,you could get in trouble,really.
- In which part of Italy you live : In the north of Italy police is more aggressive,I know plenty of people who got a fine and legal troubles (sort of obligatory rehab) for 0.5g of hash.
In the past (1970-1985) the main drug trouble in Italy was the heroin,a lot of people used to IV everywhere,in every city,outside and inside.
From the '90s people moved to coke since it went cheap,reasonable quality.
From 2000's to nowadays coke it's still around since people are still asking for that,a lot of synthetics are around discos,night club etc.
Since 2005/06 the consumption of Ketamine/MDxx/Speed is going up.
Weed/Hash is consumed everywhere by everyone,statistics follow :
2001 : People who used Cannabis on the last year - 9,8% (Italy)
2008 : People who used Cannabis on the last year - 20.3% (Italy)
A report from UN say that in 2011 Italy was the first nation in Europe for cannabis consumption - (14.6% of citizens between 15 and 65 years old used cannabis at least once in 2011).