You're right, Scram. In my "chemical" life I didn't find anyone with this hobby like me. Surely I'm not the only one, but we are not organized as you. I'd like there was also here a group like in US and UK, but in Italy the "dope mentality" comes not from the line beat generation-hippies-Leary ecc..like in your Country, but only from a black market "philosophy", run by criminals for which drugs are nothing but a good investement. There is the Antiprohibitionist section of the Radical Party, but we are a sort of elite, not widespread around the Country. Also the paralysis of political life has generated this state of things. But if we watch from an utilitarian point of view, being not many persons requiring "strange" chems, we can purchase openly lab grade iodine in 100gr bottles, for example, I don't know if the US you can buy openly that stuff. I could make cat all my life long without raising the least suspicion. I know in Milan opened a smart-drugs shop in which they sell salvia divinorum extracts. Black market drugs here fucked up the "hippie alternative", but gradually many people are discovering the entheogenic aspects of some chems and plants, only that we are at least 50 years behind than you at the other side of the Ocean.