作为全欧洲最为繁忙的水上运输通道之一，每年通过莱茵河运送的各种货物总量多达数百万吨。但最近公布的一份研究报告却向人们揭示了莱茵河不为人知的一方面：在这条奔流不息的河流中还大量充斥着另外一种物质——可卡因。

    据《卫报》11月10日报道，德国纽伦堡生物医学与制药研究院的科研人员表示，去年全年，总共有大约11吨可卡因被排入莱茵河中，其价值约为16.4亿欧元。这相当于每天有30公斤的可卡因流入了该河。科研人员相信，大约40万德国人每年至少吸食一次可卡因，而这一数字高于该国政府此前的估计。

    该研究院的罗曼·西蒙说：“如果我们的研究结果被证明是正确的话，那么实际吸食可卡因的人数要远远高于大家平时所认可的数字。”西蒙一直负责向德国政府和欧盟相关机构提供有关毒品使用方面的数据。其实，同一批科研人员早在5年前的一项发现就曾经引起过轩然大波，当时他们在位于德国首都柏林的国会大厦洗手间内找到了少量的可卡因。

    上述结论也在一定程度上呼应了英国最新公布的一项研究结果，即每天有2公斤的可卡因将泰晤士河做为了自己最后的“归宿”。

    It is one of Europe's busiest waterways, a formidable conduit that handles millions of tonnes of traffic a year. But yesterday it emerged that the Rhine contained a lot of something else - cocaine.

    According to researchers at the institute of biomedicine and pharmaceutical research in Nuremburg, almost 11 tonnes of the drug, worth some ?1.64bn, was flushed into the river last year, the equivalent of 30kg (66lbs) of cocaine a day.

    Some 400,000 Germans take the drug at least once a year, they believe, higher than previous government estimates.

    "If the institute's results are correct, then the actual numbers for cocaine consumption are much higher than the accepted figures," Roman Simon, of the Munich research institute, which delivers data on drug use to the German government and the EU, told Der Spiegel magazine. The same researchers provoked outrage five years ago after discovering traces of cocaine in the toilets of the Reichstag parliamentary building in Berlin.

    The findings appear to mirror a recent study in Britain, which claimed that 2kg of the drug end up in the river Thames every day.