Blow Up: Lawmakers in Coke and Hash Scandal
ROME, Oct. 12, 2006 — -- Imagine if 15 American congressmen tested positive for using cocaine.
Then another dozen were found to have smoked hash. And then imagine that the evidence came from an experiment by a television show.
Well, it's happened in Italy after a popular TV program that specializes in satire took it to another level.
No strangers to scandal, or backlash, the nation's honorable members of parliament are front-page news again. This time, over drug use and abuse.
The TV show "Le Iene" -- The Hyenas -- is famous for its ploys of playful entrapment.
This sting stunt pretended to interview 50 politicians about next year's budget.
What the politicians didn't know was that the "makeup artist," from a nonexistent satellite channel, had collected body cells during the preinterview brow wipe.
The cells were secretly used to test the politicians for drugs.
The results indicated that of the 50 tested, close to a third had indulged within the previous 36 hours -- four tested positive for cocaine, 12 for marijuana.
"Most of them take drugs. Cocaine is pretty familiar, but some of them just use hashish," said Franco Ferrarotti, an Italian sociologist and author.
Ferrarotti is known for his own, often sarcastic, take on Italian politics.
Ferrarotti, who was a member of parliament in the early '60s, told ABC News: "The great worry of a politician is to be re-elected, and nowadays there is insecurity so no wonder that they might take some help, from chemicals or whatever."
He said it was pretty hard for him to be scandalized by the news.
Incredibly, the controversial program hasn't aired yet.
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