High Times in Rome

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Are you experienced?" guitar legend Jimi Hendrix's loaded question helped define the mind-altering LSD culture of the late-1960s youth scene. In early 21st century Italy, there's a different query on the lips of young people: "Have you gotten smart?" No, they're not talking about university courses. And they're not talking about drugs, either. Well, not exactly.

The D word is carefully avoided by the nine friends who recently opened the PuraVida Shop in downtown Rome, even though most customers refer to their merchandise as "smart drugs." The store, along with similar "smart shops" recently opened in Milan and Bologna, gives Italy its first sniff of a quietly burgeoning Europe-wide market for all-natural, mostly herb-based substances that advertise an out-of-the-ordinary physical sensation without the ugly side effects of synthetic drugs. Both scientists and customers say it is a much softer experience than Jimi's acid trips. But what really makes it smart is the fact that it's 100% legal: none of the psychoactive ingredients show up on the Interior Ministry's list of banned ingestible substances.

With long brown hair parted in the middle and a long purple skirt and tank top, Monica Secci, 31, one of PuraVida's owners, smiles and invites a guest to follow her into the nondescript storefront in Rome's residential Testaccio neighborhood. At the bottom of a narrow winding staircase is a well-lit store painted in psychedelic colors, the very antithesis of the grimy Amsterdam "head shops" that peddle marijuana, cheap drug paraphernalia, a few legal uppers and rock-star T shirts. Here the products, which include €170 bongs, are pricey on purpose. "We wanted to have the highest quality and remain far from any suspicion," says Secci, adding that the upscale rates discourage the wrong kind of clientele. No one under 18 is permitted in the store.

Displayed along the far wall are the featured "smart" products that go on sale this week — pills and liquids billed as substitutes for all-night rave fuels like ecstasy. There's Stargate, advertised with a colorful leaflet in six languages as a "natural alternative to chemical stimulants [with] a euphoric and tingling sensation in your entire body." That'll be j18 for six doses. Or for around the same price, you can try Kryptonite, a "natural ecstasy" that "gives you a superdose of energy and a nice, spacey feeling."

PuraVida has had two visits from the police, who've looked at the store's licenses to sell alcohol, herbal products and smoking instruments. The cops say as long as the licenses are maintained and the products remain off the banned list, the store is legitimate. Secci insists her wares are harmless: "These products simply give you more energy and leave you completely lucid." Giuseppe Rotilio, a professor of nutritional science at Rome's Tor Vergata University, says little research has been done on the substances sold at smart shops, though many of the pills and elixirs have long been sold in different forms at herbalist shops. "There is an ongoing debate about what is and what isn't a drug," he says. "You have to treat each product on a case-by-case basis."

What I'm doing is ethical. Laws that prohibit you from being free with your consciousness are un-democratic. — ANANDA SCHOUTEN, Dutch wholesaler

Smart shops trace their origins to Amsterdam, where in the early 1990s people began using such substances as ginkgo, a plant extract, to improve cognitive functions and help stay alert for work and study. Those pills merged with "eco-drugs" into the broader category of smart drugs that are making their way into markets across Europe.

Dutch wholesaler Ananda Schouten says France has the most restrictive laws, but looser rules in Germany and Britain have spawned dozens of full-fledged smart shops in those countries. Schouten claims to take a missionary view of his business. "I think what I'm doing is ethical," he says. "Laws that prohibit you from being free with your own consciousness are undemocratic."

Sitting outside PuraVida, Roberto Bartoccini, 21, agrees. He is a fan of the new store and their "charge-up" drinks for his occasional nights out on the town. But, he says, there's one product still missing. "This is great," he says, "but I wish they could sell marijuana." Bartoccini is smart enough to know that is still years away.