The Italian Army is Growing Pot… to Drive Costs Down

Patients who’ve been prescribed medical marijuana in Italy have been running into a prohibitive problem: high prices. The Italian military has an unexpected solution: building a weed farm on a military-run pharmaceutical plant in the hopes of growing enough marijuana to bring those prices down.

The secure indoor farm, which will also house facilities for drying and packing the weed, is set to grow 220 pounds of the plant this year, according to a report by Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera.

The goal, Colonel Antonio Medica told Corriere TV, is for prices to fall as low as $5.60 per gram after the military harvests its crop. That would be a massive financial boon for his nation’s medical marijuana users, who at present buy their stashes at jacked-up prices approaching $40 per gram, and who pay out of pocket because the state healthcare system won’t shell out for pot, even if prescribed.

In a 2012 survey, over one in five Italians said they had smoked marijuana. In 2014, a court decision struck down a 2006 law shepherded by the conservative Silvio Berlusconi administration mandating harsh penalties for cannabis use; offenses beyond low level possession remain imprisonable. As of last year, 40 percent of Italy’s prisoners were serving time on drug convictions, and a 2013 ruling by European Court of Human Rights argued that overcrowding in Italy’s prisons violated basic rights.

Marijuana makes its way to the Italian market through dark channels: In 2008, authorities seized over 50,000 pounds of pot in an investigation that uncovered an extensive partnership between the ’Ndrangheta in Calabria and the Zetas cartel in Mexico, and Italy-U.S. joint anti-mafia raids last year revealed connections between drug syndicates in Italy, Latin America, and the United States, according to InSight Crime.

Italy may not lead the E.U. in progressive marijuana policy innovations, but with this initiative, its army certainly does.