Easy target and moral panic: the Law on Drug Addiction No. 162 of 1990

In industrialized societies the war against drugs tends to develop into a war that concretely strengthens control by the state over potentially dangerous classes. This is also true for Italy. In 1988, Bettino Craxi, now under investigation for a series of serious crimes, but at the time the powerful leader of the Socialist Party, launched a crusade against drugs. After about 18 months of moral panic campaigns, Law No. 162 was passed. Its ideological keystone is the section forbidding the personal use of narcotic or psychotropic drugs. Its officially declared objectives are to reduce the drug trade, to increase access by drug addicts to the services and, of course, to reduce the number of deaths by overdose. The available evidence, however, does not prove that these objectives have been reached. Rather, the true motivations must be sought elsewhere: in the attempt by the political class to regain legitimacy and thus consensus.