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."

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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".

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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.

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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.

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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".

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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