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A few other countries have decriminalized limited possession, cultivation or both. They include the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Czech Republic, Colombia and Chile. Still others allow marijuana for medical use, including Italy, where the army has a monopoly on commercial growing and a marijuana greenhouse in Florence. In 2013, a court in Torre Annunziata, a small town in southern Italy, sentenced a man, identified in court records only as CG, to one year in prison and a fine of 3,000 euros for growing two cannabis plants at home. He appealed the decision, first to a higher court in Naples and eventually to Italyu2019s Corte Suprema di Cassazione, the supreme court. Unlike its American counterpart, Italyu2019s supreme court is divided into multiple sections for different areas of law, and they had come to differing conclusions about small-scale cultivation of marijuana. The confusion stemmed partly from disagreement about how to apply the broader ban on cultivation to growing for private use, and how to apply a 2016 amendment that allowed people to grow and sell u201clight cannabis,u201d with low levels of THC, the psychoactive ingredient. As a result, Pietro Faraguna, a constitutional law professor at the University of Trieste, said that Italian courts u2014 including the supreme court itself u2014 have struggled to put the laws into practice. Given the contradictory rulings, in August the court asked for a ruling by its own highest authority, the Sezioni Unite, or joint sections u2014 in effect, the supreme court of the supreme court. The Sezioni Unite ruled that the u201crudimentary techniquesu201d and u201cthe small amount producedu201d in small-scale home growing makes it irrelevant to the illegal drug trade that the criminal law is intended to address. Now the court u201chas clearly said cultivating cannabis alone is not enough,u201d to be a crime, Mr. Faraguna said, setting a binding precedent. But Mr. Fiorentini said the ruling illustrated the failure of Italyu2019s lawmakers, because they should make clear what their statutes mean, rather than asking judges to cut through the confusion. u201cCourts are bailing out politics, because politics is indecisive on the issue,u201d he said.
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