The Civil Disobedience Of Walter De Benedetto, Written By Dario Sabaghi

When Walter De Benedetto was 15, doctors diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, a chronic autoimmune inflammatory disease, causing him swollen joints. Despite this, he was able to work in the Italian National Health Service until 2014.

But as his clinical situation worsened and he wasn’t more self-sufficient to walk, Walter started to use medical cannabis in 2011. Before getting access to the Italian medical cannabis program, he asked a hundred questions to doctors, who mocked him at first and they labeled him as a drug addict.  But after three months he started using Bedrocan, he felt so better that quit morphine.

In the last four years, the pain caused by rheumatoid arthritis reduced considerably because of the use of medical cannabis. But the lack of medical cannabis and the bureaucratic slowness to obtain it led him to purchase cannabis from the black market in the past years to continue his therapy.

As some patients with chronic pathologies, Walter, who today is 49 and lives in Ripa di Olmo (province of Arezzo), used medical cannabis to relieve himself. But the lack of medical cannabis available in Italy forced him, with the help of his friend Marco, to grow cannabis at home.

Law enforcement officers seized nine cannabis plants in 2019 and jailed his friend Marco for one night. “I did not commit a criminal offense but an act of disobedience for the lack of the drug. I would like my friend Marco free, who was arrested in my place for helping me with cultivation. I find it as an injustice against an innocent who only did me a favor. I tried to take responsibility for my plants, but law enforcement officers didn’t listen to me,” Walter said in an interview on the radio.

The law enforcement officers declare to have sized 20 kg of cannabis because they miscalculated the amount of the cannabis plants found in Walter’s flat. Instead of calculating only the cannabis flowers of the sized plants, which are parts of the plant containing the psychotropic cannabinoid THC, they calculated the plants in their entireties.

The prohibitionism mindset and the mismanagement of medical cannabis in Italy brought Walter to self-cultivate cannabis to not relieve his pain. His story is one of the hundreds of medical cannabis patients who have no access to the medical cannabis program for several reasons. The lack of medical cannabis in Italy is due to the little domestic production and limited import. Furthermore, not all doctors prescribe this treatment because of the lack of information and the bias against cannabis. All these elements leave some patients in a blind alley, and they are forced to self-cultivate cannabis to survive from their pain.

However, the story of Walter didn’t go unnoticed. Politicians and public figures started a campaign in favor of Walter. Furthermore, cannabis activists started a crowdfunding campaign to support the legal expenses for Walter and his friend Marco.

Walter De Benedetto didn’t expect such a mobilization for him. "I was almost overwhelmed. I did not expect such a response, I thank you and I thank all those who have been close to me", he said in an interview following the days of the arrest of his friend Marco.