The referendum question on cannabis decriminalisation is "inadmissible" or, as the president of the constitutional court, Giuliano Amato, described it at a press conference, it concerns "narcotic substances". As with euthanasia, the abrogative referendum will therefore not take place. The president of the constitutional court briefly outlined the profiles of unconstitutionality identified, explaining that the question "is structured around three sub-questions, and the first provides for the cultivation of narcotic substances listed in tables 1 and 3 to disappear from the activities subject to criminal punishment".

The tables cited, however, "do not even include cannabis, but hard drugs. This alone is sufficient to cause us to violate multiple international obligations that are an indisputable constraint of the Constitution." This, according to the court, "furthermore leads us to note the unsuitability with respect to the aim pursued" — in other words, a second profile of unconstitutionality.

Associazione Luca Coscioni @ass_coscioni

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La Corte costituzionale ha ritenuto inammissibile il quesito referendario #CannabisLegale.Dopo la decisione di ieri sull'eutanasia, oggi abbiamo perso l'occasione di cambiare un'altra legge che in questo Paese nessun politico ha il coraggio di toccare. #referendumcannabis

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The problem in the first sub-question

The first sub-question proposed removing the word "cultivates" from the first paragraph of article 73 of the Consolidated Law on Drugs, which reads:

Anyone who […] cultivates, produces, manufactures, extracts, refines, sells, offers or puts up for sale, transfers, distributes, trades, transports, procures for others, sends, passes or dispatches in transit, delivers for any purpose narcotic or psychotropic substances listed in table 1 provided for by article 14, is punished with imprisonment from six to twenty years and a fine from €26,000 to €260,000.

Table 1, Amato explained, includes "opium and opioid derivatives (morphine, heroin, methadone, etc.); coca leaves and derivatives, amphetamine and amphetamine derivatives (ecstasy and designer drugs), hallucinogens." The table relating to cannabis and its derivatives is instead number 2. "A question that decriminalises the rudimentary and home cultivation of cannabis would not have presented any profile of unconstitutionality," the president of the court added, "but we do not have the power to amend the text."