DC: 7 tons of cocaine up the nose & down the drain
Recently a German
research outfit tested wastewater in more than a dozen worldwide cities for
metabolites of cocaine. The idea was to infer per-capita cocaine use by
measuring the concentration of coke by-products (excreted through urine and
then through the waste treatment system) in the Hudson, the Potomac and other
great rivers of the world. The winner, by a lot: New York City, with an
estimated useage of 134 lines of cocaine per day per 1,000 inhabitants. That's
16 tons a year. Miranda de Ebro, in Spain's Pyrenees, came in second.
Washington D.C. placed third, with 56 lines a day per 1,000 inhabitants or 7
tons per year. San Francisco was fourth. No tests were done on the Patapsco.
Source: Institute for Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Research. The study was
cited in the United Nations' World Drug Report, published a couple weeks ago.
Thanks to Big Picture for the tip.
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