The examination of the bill ‘Provisions regarding eating disorders’ begins tomorrow in the Senate Health Committee. The rapporteur, Daniela Ternullo (FI), confirms this.
The bill, communicated to the presidency last March, introduces various innovations: it recognizes anorexia nervosa and bulimia as social diseases, also providing for heavy sanctions up to imprisonment for anyone who instigates such behavior.
Article 2 ‘Instigation to resort to eating behaviors suitable for causing or reinforcing eating disorders’, in fact, provides that “whoever, by any means, including electronically, determines or reinforces another’s intention to resort to eating behaviors food suitable for causing or reinforcing eating disorders, and facilitates their execution, is punished with imprisonment of up to two years and an administrative fine of between 20,000 and 60,000 euros”.
Furthermore, if the crime is committed against a defenseless disabled person or children under 14, “the penalty of imprisonment of up to four years and an administrative fine of between 40,000 and 150,000 euros are applied”. The bill also provides for the establishment of the National Day against Eating Disorders, on 15 March each year, “in order to spread adequate knowledge and sensitivity among citizens”.
The National Health Service is then required to prepare an intervention plan to prevent and treat these diseases. A crackdown is also envisaged with respect to the control of social networks: the Minister of the Interior, we read in article 4, “establishes by decree the criteria and methods for preventing access to sites that spread messages among minors likely to represent, due to their content, a real danger of instigating unsuitable eating habits, automatically redirecting the user anonymously to the digital portal www.disturbialimentarionline.it”. The Minister of Health will present to Parliament an annual update report on the state of knowledge and new scientific acquisitions on these diseases.
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