http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070202/hl_ … cocaine_dc

Italy sounds alarm over cocaine use By Deepa Babington
Fri Feb 2, 12:40 PM ET

Italy is becoming a nation of cocaine users, according to a senior government minister.

Interior Minister Giuliano Amato said Italians are consuming a gigantic amount of cocaine because blue-collar workers and the middle class have joined the rich in snorting the white powder.

"There is a frightening demand for the drug," Amato told reporters on a recent trip to crime-ridden Naples.

"The phenomenon can't be fought by the authorities alone if it is a demand that comes from families, youths and adults -- that is, from across all segments of society."

Italian newspapers on Friday called Amato's comments a cause for nationwide alarm and said the drug had become a "mass market" product.

Cocaine use in Italy has more than doubled in the past five years and about 7 percent of Italians snort it, according to some estimates. In the wealthy business center of Milan, one in 10 people are said to use it.

"Here cocaine is not considered a drug anymore, but simply a trendy habit," Father Gino Rigoldi, a Milan priest who runs a drug abuse center, told Corriere Della Sera newspaper.

"It has become just like wearing a nice T-shirt or the right shoes."

Italian police seized more than four tons of cocaine last year. One ton came from the shipping and port region of Campania, of which Naples is the capital.

Although top models and businessmen shell out as much as 300 euros ($390) for a gram, cocaine cut for consumption by less well-heeled young people and students costs less than 40 euros per gram on the street, Rigoldi said.

A satirical television show caused an uproar last year when it tricked 50 parliamentarians into taking a drugs test and found 12 had smoked cannabis and four had used cocaine in the previous 36 hours.

Italy's drug woes are part of a wider problem in Europe. The EU's executive commission last year said drug abuse in the 27-nation bloc and the deaths it causes had reached unprecedented levels.

In any given month, 1.5 million Europeans use cocaine and 12 million use cannabis, the commission said