Blow, snow, yeyo, powder, snort, nose candy, rich man's aspirin, whatever you want to call it, New Yorkers apparently love it.
What are we talking about? Cocaine. A lot of cocaine. All the cocaine.
Okay, so not all of the cocaine, but apparently, a hell of a lot of it.
According to SPIEGEL ONLINE, New Yorkers consume about 172 grams of the Devil's dandruff per capita annually.
How did they come up with that number?
In 2005, the Institute for Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Research (IBMP) in Nuremberg came up with a way to test the waterways surrounding an area to determine the concentration of chemical traces that point to cocaine consumption.
This year, the IBMP decided to test the Hudson River for the byproduct that would indicate cocaine consumption.
[anad]
According to SPIEGEL, the concentration of the by-product of cocaine usage indicated a projected cocaine consumption of 16.4 tons a year...
That's a lot of cocaine.
Let's break it down further, shall we? SPIEGEL used the fact that there are 3.4 million people between the ages of 15 and 65 living in the Hudson watershed, give or take a few.
They then found out, using a United Nations "World Drug Report," that 2.8% of Americans in this age range use cocaine at least once a year, which would amount to 95,000 in NYC.
In short, 95,000 people living near the Hudson River are responsible for consuming 16.4 tons of pure cocaine... 172 grams per year.
Seriously, people. That's a sh*t ton of snow, but how do we compare to the rest of the world?
Apparently, we're "the Cocaine Capital of the World," for a good reason, as Central and Western Europe reportedly consumes about 35 grams of pure cocaine a year.
Lay off the blow, people.
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[via SPIEGEL] [Feature Image Courtesy DNAinfo]