Italy
In August 2004, the Italian government decreed salvinorin A "a substance with hallucinogenic properties that may cause conditions of abuse and can manifest latent psychiatric pathologies like acute psychosis and depressive psychosis even in an irreversible way" and put it and the plant Salvia divinorum on their ‘table I’ of outlawed psychotropic substances in March 2005. The Italian government referred to an evaluation of Salvia made by the Italian National Health Institute, assessing it as "a powerful natural hallucinogen" to justify their decision. The Italian Ministry of Heath Decree (in Italian) (Google translated into English). Cultivation of the plant or the possession of more than 0,5 mg of Salvinorin A carries a penalty from 6 to 20 years in prison.
Read more about this topic: Legal Status Of Salvia Divinorum
Famous quotes containing the word italy:
“I think sometimes that it is almost a pity to enjoy Italy as much as I do, because the acuteness of my sensations makes them rather exhausting; but when I see the stupid Italians I have met here, completely insensitive to their surroundings, and ignorant of the treasures of art and history among which they have grown up, I begin to think it is better to be an American, and bring to it all a mind and eye unblunted by custom.”
—Edith Wharton (1862–1937)
“the San Marco Library,
Whence turbulent Italy should draw
Delight in Art whose end is peace,
In logic and in natural law
By sucking at the dugs of Greece.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed—they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!”
—Orson Welles (1915–84)