The co-authored paper by Assistant Professor Francesco Principe of Erasmus School of Economics on light cannabis and crime in Italy is attracting media attention once more. In Italy, a flourishing business has arisen around the sale of cannabis light, a cannabis variety that contains so little THC that one does not get high by it.
Matteo Salvini, Deputy Prime Minister of Italy and party leader of Lega North, finds this development disgusting. ‘It is not acceptable that thousand shops in Italy where drugs are legally sold in broad daylight.’
This attitude towards cannabis light is remarkable, given the results of Principe’s research, conducted together with Vinceno Garrieri (University of Magna Greece of Catanzaro) and Leonardo Madio (University of Louvain, Belgium), on the effects of cannabis light on the trade in soft drugs. The researchers estimate that the sale of this legal marijuana takes the wind out of the sails of organised crime. As a result, the mafia loses out on a profit of between 90 and 170 million euros a year.
More information about the published paper of Principe can be found here.
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Read the entire article of NOS.nl, 27 June 2019 (in Dutch).