Northern Italy flunks worlds biggest drug test

[Lefty Scaevola]

http://www.theregister.com/2005/08/05/po_snow/

River Po awash with 'cocaine' (metabolic products)
"Italian scientists have discovered that the river Po contains the remains of the consumption of more than 4kg of cocaine daily - equivalent to an annual snow festival of 1,500kg per year among the Po valley's five million inhabitants."
"test for benzoylecgonine, a byproduct of the body metabolising cocaine which makes its way into the sewer system in the normal way"
"The investigative team described the findings as "staggering", which comes as a bit of a surprise since the river Po benefits from the presence of world fashion capital Milan - generally considered to have the greatest percentage of anorexic models among its population and therefore the planet's highest per capita consumption of Bolivian marching powder. "

[mrmitchell]

IIRC every dollar bill in the United States (and presumably every Euro bill, etc.) has trace amounts of cocaine on it.

[Ecthy]

etc? Are you insinuating so does ever pound bill? Yuan-bill? Ru-bill (pun)?

[Kuciwalker]

[Atahualpa]

[debeest]

1500 kg/year for 5 million people = 0.3 grams/year/person. Not much for a user, but most of those people probably aren't doing any lines at all.

[pchang]

For every 99 non users there is 1 crackhead doing 30 grams a year.

[Ecthy]

I know some people in England who, by their looks, probably do 30 grams a day!

Hey, you ARE talking about masturbation? D'oh!

[a.kitman]

masturbating is a drug!