WEST GERMANY: Heroin Plague

Wealth .frustration and drugs

Prosperous, hard-working and orderly, West Germany has earned a reputation as perhaps Europe's most successful society. With alarming swiftness, though, the Federal Republic is now outstripping its neighbors in a far less enviable category: the nation of achievers has become the Continent's biggest market for illegal heroin. So far this year, West German police have seized 116 kilograms of heroin, a higher figure than was reported by all the other countries in Western Europe combined. At least 430 people died of drug overdose in West Germany last year, more than an eightfold increase since 1970. This...

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