Alarm over powerful new illegal drugs

(ANSA) - Rome, October 24 - Italian psychiatrists on Tuesday sounded an alarm over the spread of new more powerful illegal drugs or "reformulated" versions of old ones.
    They said reinforced cocaine and cannabis as well as a myriad varieties of amphetamines were flooding the market, drugs that were much more dangerous than in the past and capable of "driving mad" young people.
    The phenomenon is now so widespread, they said, that there are 40,000 admissions to psychiatric ERs every year now.
    The new drugs are "too easy to get hold of, sold at too low prices and too hard to identify," the psychiatrists said.