London is not the world capital of cocaine consumption. This is the conclusion of research carried out by Professor Fritz Sörgel, the director of the Institute for Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Research in Nuremberg. For the past year Sörgel and colleagues have been testing rivers around the world for traces of benzoylecgonine, the compound produced by the human liver after consumption of cocaine.
The Hudson (New York) was full of the stuff: the equivalent of 900mg per 1,000 people, the highest percentile in all the rivers tested. The Danube (Vienna) was relatively benzoylecgonine-free, as was the Aare (Bern) and the Seine (Paris). In poverty-stricken Romania nobody takes cocaine, if Sörgel’s research is accurate.
So which city, after New York, leads the world in illicit drug-taking? Sörgel assumed that it might be London. “I keep abreast of what’s happening in Britain and the British seem to have a fairly tolerant attitude towards drugs,” he says. But water samples drawn from the Thames proved him wrong. Of the 12 countries surveyed, Italy and — particularly — Spain scored more highly than Britain (130mg per 1,000 people).
And why did Sörgel not extend his research into the cocaine-producing countries? “It’s something to do with not wanting to risk my life in the name of science,” he says.