Sewage reveals local drug habits

According to two recent studies of sewage and waste water, cocaine is the preferred drug in Paris, while MDMA and meth are preferred down under. You can compare this to previous studies from 2007 and 2005, which found trace amounts of cocaine and other drugs in random air and sewage samples taken from Italy.

While sewage is not something you can set your watch by, it'll certainly tell you when the weekend has arrived.

Last year Yves Levi and colleagues at the University of Paris-South found that Parisian waste water was awash with cocaine and its metabolites on Friday and Saturday nights (Forensic Science International, DOI: 10.1016/j.forsciint.2010.04.007). MDMA, the active compound in ecstasy pills, was also present, though at much lower levels.

But things are different down under. This week the same journal has published the results of a similar study by a team led by Chang Chen at the University of Adelaide. They report a quintupling of MDMA levels and a 30 per cent rise in methamphetamine use in Adelaide at the weekend compared with midweek levels (DOI: 10.1016/j.forsciint.2011.01.037). Cocaine maintained third place all week.

Although local tastes change from continent to continent, everybody still loves coke.