This is your parliament on drugs

last updated 8 January 2015

Rome

Italian reporters have caught 16 members of Parliament using drugs in a controversial sting operation. TV reporters pretended to interview 50 lawmakers as they were leaving a parliamentary session, but the interviews were merely a pretext to allow a makeup girl to swab the politicians’ faces for drug residue. Analysis of the sweat samples showed that 12 of the lawmakers tested positive for marijuana and four for cocaine. A regulatory agency barred the TV show from broadcasting the footage, citing privacy rules, but the story was already out in the newspapers. Daniele Capezzone, leader of the Radical Party and not one of the lawmakers tested, said drug use was rampant in the legislature. “If a police dog sniffing for drugs were taken into certain political offices,” he said, “first its nose would go crazy and then it would give up altogether.”