Madrid has unveiled its latest weapon in the war on drugs: the humble Spanish waiter.

Alarmed by soaring cocaine use, the Spanish Government plans to train waiters and barmen in the subtle art of spotting punters who may be using the lavatories too often.

Businesses that comply will receive a special certificate declaring them drug-free.

The initiative comes after figures this week showed that Spaniards consume more cocaine per head than anyone in the world, overtaking Americans for the first time.

According to the United Nations study, 3 per cent of Spaniards aged 15-64 regularly inhaled cocaine in 2005.

This is double the amount consumed in 1999, and ahead of the US and Britain – in second and third positions on the list respectively.

After learning that one in five European cocaine addicts resided in Spain, the Government has decided to go on the offensive.

As part of a three-year plan Elena Salgado, the Spanish Health Minister, announced that waiters and club bouncers would be asked to increase their surveillance of premises’ lavatories, where cocaine is often consumed.

Ms Salgado dismissed criticism that waiters were being asked to behave like policemen or neighbourhood snitches, saying that the goal was simply to make it more difficult to consume cocaine with impunity.

“Businesspeople want their establishments to be free of drugs,” she said. “We don’t pretend that they search everyone. But it is evident that there are premises where it is too easy to consume.”

Cocaine use in Spain is not confined to the big cities of Madrid and Barcelona, nor the nightclubs of Ibiza.

The little-known town of Miranda de Ebro, in the landlocked province of Burgos, was found to have the second-highest consumption of the drug after New York.

New Yorkers remain the world’s most enthusiastic consumers of cocaine, inhaling an estimated 134 lines of the drug for every 1,000 people. The residents of Miranda are said to get through 97 lines per 1,000 people. This compares with 20 lines per 1,000 in London, 11 in Paris and 2 in Frankfurt.

However, the Mayor of Miranda was indignant about the UN’s findings, saying that he would lodge a formal complaint. “Miranda is not a drug paradise,” Fernando Campo told El PaÍs newspaper. “It’s absurd. It’s a phantom study that is completely unreliable.”

As for the telltale traces of benzoylecgonine found by UN inspectors, the mayor suggested that they had come from a nearby chemical plant.

The chemical, which is excreted in the urine of cocaine users, cannot be produced by other means.

Spain suffered an epidemic of heroin use in the 1980s, which racked a generation emerging from a repressive, four-decade dictatorship. But experts say that the country’s love of late nights and talking has long since helped cocaine to supplant heroin as Spaniards’ hard drug of choice.

Drug of choice

—Coca-Cola contained cocaine from 1885 until 1906, when health regulations were tightened

—Cocaine was used the first local anaesthetic, used in the 1880s for surgery

—Ernest Shackleton was aided in his explorations by Forced March, a product based largely on cocaine

—The chance of having a heart attack rises 24-fold while on cocaine

Sources: www.cocaine.org; www.whitehousedrugpolicy.com; www.drugscope.org.uk

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