ROME - Growing small amounts of marijuana at home for private use is not a crime, Italy's top court has ruled, putting an end to a years-long legal dispute and adding Italy to the short list of countries to allow cultivation of recreational cannabis. A 1990s law prohibits the cultivation and sale of marijuana in Italy, but conflicting court decisions, and a 2016 amendment that opened a loophole in the law, created confusion over how it should be interpreted. The country's highest court appears to have settled at least part of the question, writing in a one-page statement of its findings that "at home, small-scale cultivation activities are to be considered excluded from the application of the penal code." [continues 599 words]
The Islamic State and its terrorist proxies would suffer if cannabis were decriminalized, Italy's top prosecutor argues. In a recent interview, Franco Roberti also pointed out the links between the extremist group and organized crime in his country. Roberti is Italy's anti-terrorism and anti-mafia chief, a joint portfolio that was created last year. He said decriminalizing marijuana - or even making it legal - would dent the illicit networks that profit from its sale and production. The Islamic State, in particular, gleans money off smuggling routes from parts of Libya into Europe. [continues 355 words]
Although Legal, Cannabis Is Still Taboo In A Country Where The Catholic Church's Sway Is Powerful ROVIGO, Italy - Italy legalized marijuana for medical use last year, but the high cost of buying legal pot in a pharmacy meant few people signed up. Now, the government has found a solution: get the army to grow it. Starting next year, a high-security lab in a military compound in Florence will grow cannabis for Italy's health care system in an experiment the government says could bring safe, legal and affordable marijuana to suffering patients. [continues 1213 words]
ITALY legalised marijuana for medical use last year, but the high cost of buying pot in a pharmacy meant that few people signed up. Now, the government has found a solution get the army to grow it. Starting next year, a high-security laboratory in a military compound in Florence will grow cannabis for Italy's health care system in an experiment the government says could bring safe, legal and affordable marijuana to suffering patients. The new army supply should allow the government to lower the price for consumers, who now have to pay up to ten times as much at a pharmacy for marijuana officially imported from Holland that they might for a bag on the street from a local drug dealer. [continues 51 words]
We know that air pollution in the form of traffic and factory fumes can pose a health risk -- but airborne traces of illegal drugs could do too, say researchers. Scientists at the Institute of Atmospheric Pollution Research in Rome found traces of cocaine and cannabis in the air around dozens of sites in Italy. They also discovered statistical correlations between cocaine levels and certain types of cancer -- and between cannabis levels and mental disorders. The project's leader, Angelo Cecinato, was cautious about drawing firm conclusions from his study, but epidemiologist Wilson Compton of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Bethesda, Maryland, told Science Now: 'The researchers did find this link, and it's worth further exploration. [continues 140 words]
Rastafarians have always regarded Ethiopia as the promised land, but Italy could rank a close second after its Supreme Court ruled that smoking or possessing cannabis is not a criminal offence but a religious act when the person doing it is a Rastafarian. Last year, the same court declared that cultivating even a single cannabis plant was a punishable offence. But now Italy's Court of Cassation has said Rastafarians use marijuana "not only as a medical but also as a meditative herb. And, as such [it is] a possible bearer of the psychophysical state to contemplation and prayer". [continues 244 words]
More Than ,000 Addicts Have Sought Hope In A Long-Term Treatment Program That Offers Professional And Life Skills For The Years Ahead RIMINI, Italy --Where dark sunken bloodshot circles used to announce years of self-inflicted abuse, Vito Telesca now has two bright and vibrant brown eyes. His body -- the one that just five years ago had suffered so many injections it could no longer stand -- has morphed from a stench-filled rack of pasty flesh into an athletic frame that, on this day, gently tugs at the shoulder seams of a crisp white dress shirt. [continues 2204 words]
ROME - Scientists have discovered particles of cocaine and marijuana, as well as caffeine and tobacco, in the air of Italy's capital, they said yesterday. The concentration of drugs was heaviest in the air around Rome's Sapienza university, though the National Research Council's Dr. Angelo Cecinato warned against drawing conclusions about students' recreational habits. The students better pray Pope Benedict doesn't read the report. Calling their study "the first in the world to show the presence of particles of cocaine suspended in the atmosphere of the city," the researchers said they took samples in Rome, the southern city of Taranto and in Algiers in North Africa. [continues 108 words]
The paramilitary Carabinieri, a tough force which until recently was stationed in Iraq, could be sent into schools to search for drugs. The proposal follows widespread alarm in Italy at what is seen as rapidly growing drug use among the young. Livia Turco, the health minister in Romano Prodi's centre-left government, said the consumption and trafficking of drugs by students had reached the point at which it was time to begin checks throughout Italy. Ms Turco, who has control of a Carabinieri detachment, said her initiative reflected "a sense of responsibility towards parents". [continues 409 words]
Parents in Milan are being offered free urine-testing kits so they can find out if their teenagers are using illegal drugs. In a part of the northern Italian city, which is controlled by the right-wing National Alliance party, almost 4,000 families will receive a coupon they can exchange for a kit to test for widely used drugs, including cannabis and cocaine. The kits, available free to all parents of children aged 13 to 16, are similar to pregnancy tests in that they need to be dipped in urine for a few seconds and then they give a positive or negative reading for a variety of drugs. [end]
Parents in the Italian city of Milan are being offered do-it-yourself narcotics testing kits to check their children for drug use. Over the next few days, the city's council will send letters to almost 4,000 homes with children between the ages of 13 and 16. Inside will be a voucher that can be exchanged at chemists for one of the kits. Similar to a home pregnancy test, the kit requires a urine sample and can be used to reveal traces of any one of five drug groups, from amphetamines to opiates. [continues 210 words]
ROME - Italy's Government yesterday doubled the amount of cannabis people can possess without risking prosecution and announced a major overhaul of the laws on narcotics use. Causing an outcry from the centre-right opposition, but joy from campaigners for drugs liberalisation, Health Minister Livia Turco said the maximum amount of marijuana to be considered for "personal use" would be doubled to 1g in terms of its active ingredient. That would allow for possession of up to around 40 joints, the Health Ministry said. "I intervened so thousands of young people don't have to go to jail or suffer a criminal proceeding for smoking a joint," said Turco, a member of the largest Government party, the Democrats of the Left. [end]
NAPLES, Italy -- Marco L. has a memento of the late summer night when he and two friends were sprayed with gunfire by men on scooters, as the friends chatted near the Gate of San Gennaro in the heart of Naples: a bullet is still lodged near his hip. The ochre walls of the piazza are also scarred, with pockmarks from bullets gone astray. The security grate on the toy store has 80 bullet holes, the owner estimates. "They must have mistaken us for someone else," said Marco, a baby-faced 22-year-old in a red sweatshirt and jeans, who spent 15 days in the hospital. "They fired 12 or 13 shots, and all three of us were hit." He refused to give his full name for fear of retribution. [continues 817 words]
Marco L. has a memento of the late summer night when he and two friends were sprayed with gunfire by men on scooters, as the friends chatted near the Gate of San Gennaro in the heart of Naples. A bullet is still lodged near his hip. The ochre walls of the piazza are also scarred, with pockmarks from bullets gone astray. The security grate on the toy shop has 80 bullets holes, the owner estimates. "They must have mistaken us for someone else," said Marco L., a baby- faced 22-year-old in a red sweatshirt and jeans, who spent 15 days in a hospital. He refused to give his surname for fear of retribution. "They fired 12 or 13 shots and all three of us were hit," he said. [continues 926 words]
Italian Show Exposes Pot, Cocaine Use Bogus Makeup Artist Collected Skin Cells LONDON -- Secret drug tests by a popular TV show have apparently revealed that some Italian MPs are running on more than good food and fine wine. In a sting operation that has the country buzzing, the show secretly tested 50 lawmakers and found almost a third had taken drugs in the previous 36 hours -- 12 testing positive for marijuana and four for cocaine. The results seemed to confirm widespread rumours about rampant drug use in the hallowed halls of Italian power. In a country where the previous government passed a "zero tolerance" drug law last February, the sting dominated yesterday's newscasts. [continues 537 words]
A television programme that purports to show widespread drug use among Italy's MPs was scrapped before transmission last night amid uproar over both the results and the methods used to entrap the politicians. In a classic sting operation some 50 politicians were fooled into thinking they were being interviewed about aspects of next year's draft budget, currently before parliament. Instead, a make-up artist with a satirical TV show swabbed their eyebrows to get a sample of their perspiration, which was then tested for traces of cannabis and cocaine. Twelve allegedly tested positive for cannabis and four for cocaine, all apparently taken in the 36 hours before being approached. [continues 617 words]
ROME - Italy's privacy authority has suspended transmission of a satirical TV programme which found widespread drug use among politicians, but the decision only fanned the storm created by the show's report. The programme, Le Iene, announced it had secretly tested 50 lower house deputies for illegal substances and found almost one third had taken drugs in the previous 36 hours, 12 of them testing positive for cannabis and four for cocaine. The latest exploit by the Iene (the Hyenas), well known for pranks that embarrass public figures, was on the front page of most of Italy's newspapers, with politicians' reactions ranging from satisfaction to anger. [continues 309 words]
Boosted by its overwhelming victory in the referendum on devolution yesterday, the centre-left Government of Romano Prodi has moved to dismantle yet another legacy of the Berlusconi era by overturning its "zero tolerance" drugs policy. The change will restore the distinction between "hard" and "soft" drugs, and will increase the amount of cannabis a person can possess without being arrested as a suspected dealer. During its first month in power the Centre Left, which won local elections last month as well as the general election in April, has reversed the policies of Silvio Berlusconi's five-year administration on issues from Iraq to significant infrastructure projects. [continues 387 words]
MILAN Italy famously shuts down in August, and that may explain the sleepy response to a report last weekend that drug abuse in northern Italy has been significantly underestimated. But acknowledging that cocaine use has surged, Italian authorities said they were treating the findings as a wake-up call. Officials are so concerned with the rise in cocaine consumption that they plan to initiate a nationwide awareness campaign targeting young people this autumn. "We're looking closely at the issue, which is very preoccupying," Carlo Giovanardi, minister for relations with Parliament, said in a telephone interview. [continues 674 words]
An Italian prosecutor tells Nick McKenzie it is time Australian police woke up to the Mafia menace in their midst. MANY of the towns scattered across the picturesque region of Calabria in southern Italy seem frozen in time. Local dialects spill from ancient shopfronts and, while cars have mostly replaced carts, the streets are still lined with cobblestones. Another tradition is that the Calabrian Mafia, known as the " 'Ndrangheta" or "Honoured Society", frustrates the authorities and the Government. So it was something of a coup when, about four years ago, an undercover operative infiltrated the Mancuso family, as part of an investigation codenamed Operation Decollo. As the evidence grew, so did the belief of Italian investigators that they stood a good chance of crushing one of Calabria's leading crime syndicates. [continues 1970 words]
John Hooper Reports on the Government's Efforts to Force Through a New, Zero-Tolerance Drugs Policy Anyone planning a holiday in Italy and thinking of enjoying a quiet spliff while, let's say, watching the sun go down over the Bay of Naples, had better think again. A vote in the Italian parliament yesterday means that a new, zero-tolerance policy on drugs is almost certain to become law within the next couple of months. With the aroma of defiantly smoked cannabis floating in the air outside, lawmakers approved a measure that abolishes the distinction between hard and soft drugs and makes possession, as well as dealing, a criminal offence. [continues 506 words]
ROME - The mighty Po river is not only Italy's longest. It also may be the highest, at least judging by the amount of cocaine coursing through its waters. Italian scientists, trying to develop a new way of measuring levels of drug abuse, tested the river's waters for excreted cocaine, and for its main urinary metabolic by-product benzoylecgonine. They say that the equivalent of about US$400,000 worth of cocaine was flowing through the 652 km-long river every day. [continues 154 words]
Italy - Antonio de Luise saw them coming. Police say the 20-year-old was a vedetta, or drug pusher's lookout, someone on the lowest rung of the ladder of organised crime in Naples. In panic, he turned into the nearest shop, a delicatessen hung with hams and salamis. But the two men followed him in and shot him several times in front of staff and customers. One of the bullets lodged in De Luise's skull. He died in the ambulance on the way to hospital as a police helicopter swept low overhead searching for the killers. Witnesses said they escaped on a motorbike. [continues 976 words]
ROME (Reuters) - Cocaine and ecstasy not only cause addiction and raise the risk of cancer but also provoke genetic mutations, Italian scientists said Friday. "Cocaine and ecstasy have proved to be more dangerous than we had imagined," said Giorgio Bronzetti, chief scientist at the National Center for Research's (CNR) biotechnology department. "These drugs, on top of their toxicological effects, attack DNA provoking mutations and altering the hereditary material. This is very worrying for the effects it could have on future generations," he said. [continues 102 words]
Government Proposal Would Recriminalize Drug Possession, Including Marijuana Ten years ago this April, Italians voted to decriminalize simple drug possession. Now the rightist government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi wants to undo that, and then some. A proposal floated by Deputy Prime Minister Giancarlo Fini, leader of Italy's former neo-fascist party, and approved by Berlusconi and his cabinet in mid-November, would make possession of even the smallest amount of drugs an offense, and possession of more than the "daily minimum dose" of even marijuana could lead to a six-year prison sentence. [continues 972 words]
Italy's centre-right government has approved a proposal making it an offence to possess and use even the smallest quantities of mild narcotics. The move could give Italy some of Europe's most severe anti-drugs laws. People caught with modest amounts of cannabis, cocaine, ecstasy and other drugs will be subject to penalties such as deprivation of their passports and driving licences. Those with larger amounts will face prison sentences of up to 20 years. The proposal, adopted by the prime minister and his cabinet on Thursday, must still be passed by parliament. But approval seems likely because all four parties in the coalition government, headed by Silvio Berlusconi, supported it. The coalition controls both legislative chambers. [continues 341 words]
Cannabis and Ecstasy Users Face Tough Penalties in Crackdown ROME -- Furious argument erupted in Italy yesterday over plans by Silvio Berlusconi's hard-right government for a sharp u-turn on drug control. A bill drawn up by the deputy prime minister and leader of Italy's former neo-fascists, Gianfranco Fini, abolishes distinctions between "hard" and "soft" drugs and introduces stiff penalties for possession as well as trafficking. Cannabis users caught with more than a few days' supply face jail sentences. Clubbers found with a single ecstasy tablet could have their passports impounded. [continues 494 words]
Are you experienced?" guitar legend Jimi Hendrix's loaded question helped define the mind-altering LSD culture of the late-1960s youth scene. In early 21st century Italy, there's a different query on the lips of young people: "Have you gotten smart?" No, they're not talking about university courses. And they're not talking about drugs, either. Well, not exactly. The D word is carefully avoided by the nine friends who recently opened the PuraVida Shop in downtown Rome, even though most customers refer to their merchandise as "smart drugs." The store, along with similar "smart shops" recently opened in Milan and Bologna, gives Italy its first sniff of a quietly burgeoning Europe-wide market for all-natural, mostly herb-based substances that advertise an out-of-the-ordinary physical sensation without the ugly side effects of synthetic drugs. Both scientists and customers say it is a much softer experience than Jimi's acid trips. But what really makes it smart is the fact that it's 100% legal: none of the psychoactive ingredients show up on the Interior Ministry's list of banned ingestible substances. [continues 554 words]
Italian teenagers can smoke joints on school trips, as long as they are sharing them rather than selling them, an Italian court has ruled. Francesco, a student from Rome, was caught with enough hashish for 40 joints during a school excursion two years ago when he was 17, and fined €1,250 (?830) for selling it to his classmates. He appealed saying he had bought the hashish on behalf of a "smoking group" of friends and simply collected their financial contributions afterwards. [continues 166 words]
Drug Tourism New Fight For Italian Tax Police MILAN, Italy -- On a sunny Saturday on a highway surrounded by the lakes and mountains between Italy and Switzerland, a young man watched Italian tax police inspect his sleek motor scooter. His cross-border jaunt into Europe's newest drug paradise came to an end when police discovered the first of five small pouches of top-grade marijuana. "Any more than that, then he could be going to prison," said Loredano, a plainclothes border tax policeman. "Our dogs would have been all over him with that amount." [continues 536 words]
ROME: Maverick Italian politician Marco Pannella drank his own urine while on a hunger strike against what he claims are anomalies in the Italian electoral system, party officials said on Saturday. The 72-year-old founder and president of the small Radical Party, who is also a member of the European parliament, has declared six members of the Italian lower house represent "phantom electorates" due to anomalies in the system. Pannella, who is in the sixth day of a hunger strike, is no stranger to controversy following his campaigns to decriminalise cannabis and to abolish the Vatican's status as a separate country. [continues 107 words]
FLORENCE, Italy - The council of Italy's northern region of Lombardy approved on Tuesday a motion in favour of marijuana-based medicines, asking the Italian government and the parliament "to regulate the medical use of cannabis and its derivatives." While Canada, the UK, Spain, Australia, Holland and some US states allow the use of marijuana as a treatment for chronic illnesses, at least in clinical trials, in Italy there is no legal way to obtain it but to ask for a magistrate's ruling. [continues 173 words]
FLORENCE, Italy - A judge has forced Italy's national health system to allow a woman with terminal lung cancer to use marijuana-based drugs for pain treatment. Venice's magistrate Barbara Bortot ruled Tuesday that the local medical authorities of San Dona di Piave, near Venice, where the woman lives, must obtain the drugs abroad and then provide them free of charge to the patient. The patient asked the permission of the magistrate, since cannabis-based painkilling drugs are banned in Italy. [continues 269 words]
ROME, Italy - American volleyball player Prikeba Phipps was suspended Friday by the Italian Volleyball Federation after testing positive for marijuana. Her Bergamo teammate, Maurizia Cacciatori, also tested positive for banned substances in a second analysis. Both players were tested after the Oct. 20-21 Supercopa Italiana in Vicenza. [end]
ROME -- Italy's financial police face a huge challenge unraveling the money trail from the Mafia's illegal drug trade to find the strand that leads back to the Taliban in Afghanistan. "You'd need a crystal ball to tell how much of the money generated from the Mafia's illegal activities can be traced back to the Taliban," said Sandro Senatore, head of the Guardia di Finanza's operations to combat money laundering. "There's no way to tell until you get to the very end of the money trail." [continues 1050 words]
VINE growers in Sicily are being coaxed by the Mafia to abandon their vineyards for a much more lucrative crop - cannabis, say local investigators. In a full-page report yesterday, the newspaper La Repubblica said an area stretching for "thousands of square kilometres" had been nicknamed il triangolo d'oro di marijuana. The capital of the "golden triangle" is Partinico, a Mafia heartland 12 miles from Palermo, where cannabis grows in greenhouses among the vineyards. During the most recent of 10 seizures at cannabis plantations in the area, paramilitary police arrested nine farmers, including Antonio Bonomo, son of Don Giuseppe Bonomo, the Mafia godfather of Partinico. [continues 146 words]
AVIANO AB, Italy — The war on drug use has hit home for Air Force officials as they continue their battle against airmen using illegal drugs. Concerns have grown as officials watch more and more airmen find trouble with designer drugs such as Ecstasy. A recent set of recommendations by the Air Force Drug Abuse Reduction team concluded that there "was an increase in drug use in the Air Force," according to Maj. Janice Pegram, the team's chief. That's based at least partially on an increase of airmen caught using drugs. [continues 494 words]
ROME--Professional cyclists throughout Europe on Friday condemned the sweeping drug raid at the Giro d'Italia in which police searched the hotel rooms of riders. The raid at the seaside city of San Remo comes a month before the Tour de France, the showcase race that was thrown into chaos in 1998 because of police raids. The International Cycling Union described the latest raid as "deplorable" and "excessive." The search of the rooms and vehicles of all 20 teams began Wednesday night. It lasted until 4 a.m. Thursday. [continues 167 words]
Australian Simon Main and the man accused of being his drug-smuggling accomplice have allegedly given police information leading to the seizure of 1,900,000 ecstasy tablets in Los Angeles. The report in Italy is the first suggestion that Main, facing up to 20 years in jail if found guilty, may be helping police in a bid to reduce his potential sentence. Main, whose mother is a former partner of entertainer Barry Crocker, and Englishman Alex Bruell face charges of international drug trafficking after their arrest near Trieste in April. [continues 333 words]
Alleged Australian drug trafficker Simon Main has hired OJ Simpson's lawyer, while his co-accused is helping police with their investigations into Europe's biggest ecstasy bust. Main, who could face up to 20 years in prison, continues to protest his innocence. Police say he has hired Los Angeles celebrity lawyer Robert Shapiro - part of the Dream Team who won Simpson's acquittal over his wife's murder - as well as taking on a tough-talking Italian lawyer, Giuliano Carretti. [continues 576 words]
Investigators suspect a major organised crime syndicate in California was behind the alleged shipment of $10 million of ecstasy intercepted in Italy last week, over which Australian Simon Main has been charged. The United States Drug Enforcement Authority and Customs Service are investigating 30-year-old Main's background and that of the other man arrested, Briton Alex Bruell, to see if they are linked to known crime figures. Investigators say Main made several trips in and out of the US this year. They will now try to trace his movements for clues to who else might have been involved in the alleged smuggling operation. [continues 301 words]
THE increasing popularity of British-style pubs is being blamed for Italian youngsters hitting the bottle. According to figures released by the Permanent Observatory on Young People and Alcohol in Rome, 12 per cent of 18 to 25-year-olds now have a "serious drink problem". The trend, described as an alien drinking culture and a "worrying new phenomenon", is being blamed on the increasing availability of alcohol and youngsters' growing desire to get drunk. Roberto Montalto, the director of the National Association Against Alcoholism, called it the "the culture of getting wasted". He said: "Alcohol is a drug and is often the most readily available and affordable. Italian youngsters are treating it like ecstasy." [continues 275 words]
ROME (AP) The founder of Italy's Radical Party was convicted for the second time Tuesday of handing out free hashish. Marco Pannella was ordered to pay a $3,700 fine and given a suspended sentence of two months and 20 days. The case dated to December 1995, when he handed out about 3 grams of hashish to crowds in Rome's central Piazza Navona. Pannella has long crusaded for the legalization of hashish and marijuana, contending it would cripple the Mafia's lucrative drug-dealing business. [continues 87 words]
VATICAN CITY - The head of the Vatican's Swiss Guard unveiled reforms Tuesday, including psychological exams for new recruits, one year after a disgruntled guard shot to death his commander, the commander's wife and then killed himself. The killings, the first in the Vatican in 150 years, prompted the papal security force to review their recruiting procedures and regulations. "There are many scars and open wounds that are silent witnesses of May 4, 1998," said Col. Pius Segmueller, the force's new leader. [continues 176 words]
PRINCE Serge of Yugoslavia, a grandson of the last king of Italy, should stand trial on charges of drug dealing, say Turin prosecutors. The ruling is a fresh blow for Italy's troubled house of Savoy weeks after it was rocked by murder. The 36-year-old son of Princess Maria Pia of Savoy, daughter of King Umberto II, was allegedly caught by detectives last year buying cocaine in Turin, where, despite having an official Monte Carlo residence, he has a home and works as a design consultant. Magistrates say they have photographs to back their claims, together with evidence from witnesses. [continues 258 words]
A summary of the judicial findings confirmed the Vatican's assertion, immediately after the tragedy last May, that Vice-Corporal Cedric Tornay, 23, killed Colonel Alois Estermann, 44, the newly appointed head of the Pope's protection force, and his wife Gladys, 49, in a "fit of madness". It said that Vice-Corporal Tornay was mentally unstable, had felt persecuted by Colonel Estermann, and resented being passed over for a military honour. Muguette Baudat-Tornay, Vice-Corporal Tornay's mother, contested the Vatican's conclusions, insisting that her son had been "framed" as part of a Vatican plot to eliminate the new commander. Nicola Picardi, the Vatican lawyer who led the inquiry,said traces of cannabis were found in Vice-Corporal Tornay's body after the murder. [end]
INVESTIGATORS said yesterday that the worst Mafia-style massacre in Italy in eight years was probably related to a clash for control of drug trafficking in Sicily. They said they feared the shootings in Sicily on Saturday night could signal the start of a new war among crime clans in the south-east of the island after a period of relative peace. Five men in their 20s and 30s were mowed down in a burst of at least 40 bullets by two men who burst into a bar at a petrol station on Saturday night. [continues 363 words]
ROME, Jan 3 (Reuters) - Investigators said on Sunday that the worst Mafia-style massacre in Italy in eight years was probably related to a clash among crime clans for control of drug trafficking in Sicily. They said they feared the shootings in Sicily on Saturday night could signal the start of a new war among crime clans in the southeast of the island after a period of relative peace. Five men in their 20s and 30s were mowed down in a hail of gunfire by two men who burst into a bar of a petrol station on Saturday night. [continues 365 words]
Nestled in Italy's Tuscan hills is a monastery turned hotel where the rich rub shoulders with reforming junkies - and pay for the privilege. Alan Franks retreats himself Considering that I was the only guest, there seemed to be an awful lot of covert activity at the Convento di St Francesco. There were people vanishing like shadows across the cloistered courtyards, and raised voices behind the closed doors of the refectory. One explanation was that the legendary Padre Eligio was here. Present or not, the mere size of this man's reputation is enough to make anyone look lively. [continues 1777 words]
Go ahead, indulge your chocolate fantasies. They may make you fat, they may make you happy, but they won't, apparently, make you high. Scientists in Italy reported today that, contrary to earlier reports, certain substances in chocolate do not appear to mimic the effects of marijuana on the brain. The Italian researchers reported that cocoa contains no more of the suspect substances than such uncelebrated foods as milk or oatmeal. Furthermore, they said, most of the substances -- known as endocannabinoids -- are broken down in the digestive system before they reach the brain. [continues 369 words]
Inside Italy
