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, reports Reuters, 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.

The new army supply should allow the government to lower the price for consumers, who now have to pay up to 10 times as much at a pharmacy for marijuana officially imported from Holland as they might for a bag on the street from a local drug dealer.

About 40 miles from Venice, Italy’s top cannabis expert, agricultural scientist Gianpaolo Grassi, is trying to grow the perfect pot plant on his 70-hectare research farm, the only place in the country authorized to grow marijuana outdoors with more than 0.2 percent of the psychoactive chemical THC.

His breeds, also blooming indoors under powerful lamps and behind armored doors, are expected to be grown in the Florence military lab, which already produces so-called “orphan drugs” to treat rare diseases.