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Up To 90 Percent of US Money Has Traces of Cocaine
mmmscience writes "Scientists have found that up to 90% of US paper money has some cocaine contamination, up from the 67% mark measured two years ago. Looking at bills from 17 cities, it's no surprise that the city with the highest level was Washington DC, where up to 95% of bills gathered there tested positive. From a global standpoint, both Canada and Brazil tested rather high (85% and 80%, respectively), but China and Japan were well behind the curve at 20% and 12%. The researchers hope that studies such as these will be of help to law enforcement agencies that are attempting to understand the growth and flow of drug use in communities."
I think you misunderstand. It's not the carrying of cocaine in your wallet/pocket/purse that contaminates the dosh, it's the snorting of it through a rolled up note.
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
Bill's can get cocaine on them without ever having been directly in contact with cocaine. The most common way this occurs is if a bill has cocaine on it and then it goes in or out of some sort of feeder machine (such as that on an ATM), it can leave small amounts of coke residue that then rub off on other bills. Given that, part of the disparity may be due to different types of ATMs and similar technology. Similarly, it isn't implausible that the increase in the percentage of bills with cocaine on them (as reported in TFA) might be due to some set of subtle technological changes that make it easier for cocaine to spread from bill to bill.
Snopes says... true. Wow, that almost never happens--I had always assumed this was a myth. The Snopes article, BTW, is much more informative and detailed than the one linked in the Slashdot post.
No, the suggestion is that most of the paper money in America has been in contact with cocaine users.
Ummm... the article isn't introducing this as a new issue. Even the article summary makes that clear. The article is about the increases in contamination.
The point of the article is that the rate of contamination is increasing. The Snopes article makes mention of 1985 being 33 to 50% contamination rates. The article summary refers to a 2-year-old study that puts contamination closer to 67%, and now the most recent study puts it at around 90%. So the point is that the contamination has increased.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Which is also very likely false. Money just doesn't flow in that way. On the other hand, it seems likely that most automated money processing machines have been in contact with contaminated bills. And I expect that those machines aren't regularly thoroughly cleaned and contaminate all subsequent bills, which in turn contaminate subsequent machines.
"Traces" has no definition above one molecule (or could be even less if you're into holistic medicine /grin). One bill handled with coke-covered hands or used to snort could contaminate tens of thousands of other bills with "traces" of coke.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Thanks to the money of millons of addicts, LatinAmerica is a BIG WAR ZONE, where thousands of innocent people die, get wounded, forced to migrate, hunger, etc . When a addict buys their drugs are they aware of the atrocities that their money is creating in LatinAmerica?
The most common test for the seizure of currency is a dog sniff. It is little know that cocaine is, in fact, odorless. Drug dogs do not detect cocaine. They detect a biproduct of the production of cocaine called methyl benzoate. Methyl benzoate is a volitile organic compound that dissapates quickly. If a dog hits on it, it is a clear sign not only that the money has been in close contact with cocaine, but that it was RECENTLY so.
Take a look at this case United States v. $30,670 in U.S. Funds, 403 F.3d 448 (7th Cir. 2005). There the court does a good analysis of the available facts. You would need at least 50,000 innocently tainted bills (not dollars, but bills!) for the dog to hit on it.
Of course, this is Slashdot, so I don't know why I would expect someone to know what they are talking about . . .
Methyl benzoate isn't specific to cocaine, and it is not just a byproduct of manufacture of cocaine, but is produced by cocaine hydrochloride (powder cocaine) exposed to humid air. So if there's cocaine on the bills, and the air is humid, there will be methyl benzoate as well. Further, if the bills were exposed to methyl benzoate from some other source, a dog trained to alert on it would detect it.
There have been a certain number of arrests in circumstances that would be considered absurd in any other country:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-512815/Briton-jailed-years-Dubai-customs-cannabis-weighing-grain-sugar-shoe.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/4200952.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Dubai#Zero_tolerance_drug_policy
I've been through Dubai and I did think it seemed quite strict, security-wise. They didn't do much more than X-ray most people but I wouldn't be at all surprised if you were to find some silly percentage in the 80-90s were "carrying drugs" if you use machinery as sensitive as they do.
Ones, Fives and Tens have average circulation life of less than 2 years. Twenties have average circulation life of approximately 2 years. Fifties have average circulation life of a little more than 4 and 1/2 years and one hundred dollar bills have average circulation life of about 7 and 1/2 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Note
So it's unlikely that any 24 year old bills would be contaminating new bills. But there still may be some old-new contamination going on nonetheless.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
By prosecutors in cocaine cases, until the first case in which a defense lawyer requested and got, with the judge's permission, the cash out of the prosecutor's wallet, sent it off for testing for cocaine, and came back with a 100% positive test for cocaine traces on every bill. How many people were wrongly convicted with the help of the prosecutor's trick of pointing out "traces of cocaine" on the money in evidence, was exposed?
Obligatory telephone sanitizer link.
If anyone is wondering about the WD40 & Vaseline, it's cause some nightclubs will put a thin layer on the toilet tank to discourage cocaine use. (It's hard to tell it's there at a glance and if you're gonna do coke, you've probably been drinking too.) If you try to scrape out lines on a coat of Vaseline, you'll end up with a greasy paste.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)