mountains of coke

Coca products were taboo for a long time in Colombia. Now Colombians can purchase coca wine, coca tea and coca cookies. The newest product is called Coca-Sek, an energy drink that is fast developing an international reputation -- much to the irritation of the Coca Cola company.
This sign at the coca plantation indicates that coca cultivation is being supported by the children's rights organization Terres des Hommes.


In other news, Last year, a study instigated by SPIEGEL ONLINE made big headlines: Experts had foraged Germany's rivers for a substance produced by the human body during cocaine consumption, and the results were bountiful. The extrapolated numbers revealed, among other things, that residents around the river Rhine's drainage basin near Düsseldorf consume roughly 11 tons of cocaine each year. The street value: around €1.64 billion.

Now the experts at Nuremberg's Institute for Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Research (IBMP) have expanded their method to other EU countries and the US. The results are similar to those of 2005: Previous official estimates for cocaine use, which rely heavily on police statistics, are apparently way too low.

For example in New York, IBMP teams searched the Hudson River and found the by-products of a projected cocaine consumption totaling 16.4 tons per year. There are approximately 3.4 million people aged 15 to 65 living in the Hudson's watershed. According to the United Nations "World Drug Report," 2.8 percent of Americans in this age group use cocaine at least once a year. That would mean that about 95,000 people are responsible for an annual consumption of 16.4 tons of pure cocaine -- a per capita rate of 172 grams per year.

Strong variations

But the "World Drug Report" says the average user, at least in Central and Western Europe, consumes only 35 grams of pure cocaine per year. Unless the appetite of the average American is considerably greater, present estimates of overall consumption are likely to be too low. Either there are more coke-heads than reflected by the official statistics, or they snort far more Charlie per year than yet realized.

And there's more. IBMP Director Fritz Sörgel says there are a number of further lessons provided by his study:

• Good news for Germany -- cocaine consumption has, according to his data -- stagnated.

• New York continues its reign as the Cocaine Capital of the World. One is almost tempted to upbraid them for wasting the stuff. Nowhere did researchers find as much pure cocaine as they did in the Hudson River.

• Europe is catching up in cocaine consumption, with Spain bravely leading the way. The British and Italians also display a ravenous appetite for blow.

The details vary, though, from city to city. In Washington's Potomac, IBMP chemists found traces of an annual per capita consumption of 73 grams of cocaine, while the San Francisco Bay indicates an annual use of little more than 40 grams per person.

In Europe, the pattern is similar. According to current estimates by the European Union, about 1 percent of Germany's 18 to 59-year-old population consumes cocaine at least once a year. Based on the IBMP measurements, that would mean that the average cocaine user in Nuremberg consumes a mere six grams per year, while in Mannheim the number is closer to 55 grams.