I lived in Italy for a while when I was studying photography. Anyone who's lived there can tell you that the green supply is low. Yet, you'll probably never have a shortage of hash. My friends an I were sitting on the front steps of a church. This is pretty much popular culture there. At night, when it's warm the younger people will tend to hang out on old church steps and piazzas. Well, this particular evening it's getting sort of late because we'd been out drinking all night. We decided to sit down and roll ourselves a spliff. As I'm sitting there melting the strip of turkish blonde, a man walks up in plain clothes. We look at him, he seems to be in his late 20's early 30's, so we pay him no mind. He asks (this whole conversation is in Italian, btw) my friends and I if we had seen anyone selling hash that night. Since what I was using was bought several days prior, from a friend, we say 'no'. He stands there for a moment, and I'm busy with my task of rolling the spliff so I don't pay him any mind whatsoever. I hear my one friend say, "ah cazzo!" (oh fuck). I look up and the guy was standing there holding an open leather folio with a Carabinieri badge on it. For those of you who don't know, the Carabinieri are essentially one step below the FBI in italy. I immediately snapped my zippo shut and hand him my strip of hash. What am I gonna do, tell him it doesn't exist? Even though he's been standing there for close to two minutes while I light and relight my lighter in order to melt the hash. Besides, I'm an American citizen on a student visa so I figured I'd play dumb American tourist. All he did was take the hash from my hand, snap it in half, and hand it back to me. He said to us, "well, you boys stay out of trouble. Understand" We weeble our meesly heads in a 'yes' and he walked off. Really though, hash and mary are illegal in Italy. Yet, their treatment of it is very tolerant. Police aren't looking for the users. They care about the people selling it. I had numerous friends get caught smoking and in possession of both. Only one ever got in trouble. He got a 100 Euro fine. That's it.