Word: heroines
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Mafia drug traffickers. And across the Atlantic, U.S. FBI agents rounded up still more suspects in eight cities. A trail that began in Buffalo and Philadelphia three years ago had led the two countries to crack open a powerful transatlantic drug ring accused of flooding the U.S. with Italian heroin smuggled in wine bottles, tomato cans and the luggage of Sicilian housewives. At week's end the arrests stood at 80, a virtual Who's Who of Mafiosi in Italy...
Last week's arrests could be just the tip of the iceberg. When police severed the French Connection in the early 1970s, the Marseilles gang was replaced in the heroin business by the Mafia, which began using old cigarette- smuggling routes to accommodate the drug traffic. By the early 1980s, Sicily had become the world's Heroin Central, and Mafia leaders had linked up with Latin American dealers to ship cocaine to the U.S. and Europe...
While the Mafia fed the world's drug habit, the problem initially did not seem urgent in Italy. In 1975 Parliament passed one of Europe's most liberal drug laws, which allowed individuals to possess an unspecified "modest quantity" of narcotics -- even heroin and cocaine -- for personal use. The legislation was hard only on dealers: they could be sentenced to 30 years in prison...
...scourge has hit home. Italy is ravaged by an epidemic of drug addiction more widespread and lethal than anywhere else in Europe. The country has the largest number of addicts on the Continent: an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 are hooked on heroin alone. So far this year, 700 Italians, mostly young people, have died from overdoses -- another tragic record -- with the highest death tolls in industrial centers like Milan and Turin. Says Milan Mayor Paolo Pillitteri: "The problem has exploded this year. The quantity of heroin and cocaine on the streets is enormous." Every day, he says, special...
...urged Americans to "Just say no" to other drugs. Let the next Administration commit itself to leading the U.S. away from its single most deadly habit. Cigarettes kill an estimated 300,000 Americans annually. That is 15% of the deaths in the country, far more than are caused by heroin, cocaine or other illegal drugs that have aroused such concern. Nonsmokers -- more than two-thirds of the population -- subsidize cigarettes through increased Medicare and Medicaid payments to provide care for victims, as well as through stiffer private insurance premiums that reflect smokers' high rates of heart disease, cancer and emphysema...