Starting in 2015 Italy will allow cannabis to be used for medical purposes, and testing is underway in a top secret lab not far from Venice in conditions of high security.

Italy says it has no intention of going down the same route as the USA, where medical use has led to cannabis’s decriminalisation in several states, and that is will remain legal only in medical applications.

“Medical use presents notable advantages because with the consumption of just a few milligrams of the material, which can de dissolved in a drink or baked into a pastry, one can ingest a dose that is sufficiently high to produce a positive effect,” said researcher Gianpaolo Grassi.

The army has been given responsibility for growing the stuff, but many poor farmers struggling to make a living are jumping the gun and getting into the weed business in anticipation of a slackening of the laws.