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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."
Don't get caught with US dollars on you in Dubai.
Error: password can't contain reverse spelling of ancient Chinese emperor
Please, could it not simply be that when the money is bundled together it is cross-contaminated?
I see Plan Columbia has been a smashing success, just like all the other attempts at Prohibition 2.0: This Time Without Constitutional Justification.
These types of studies come out pretty often, usually with the same hysterical tone. When you start talking about stuff in such tiny amounts then just about any substance can be found. There's cocaine in the air in many places if you go as low as parts per billion. There's uranium in the water. There's the ash of dead people in your air. There's fly eggs in your soup. There's pesticides in your baby's bottle.
If anything, this is more interesting in our ability to detect small amounts of things than a social statement.
I am curious what the break down is on the types of bills being used. Is there a preference for $20 or $100 bills? I always preferred the $100, partly for show, but also because they tended to be crisper..
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Scientists have found that up to 90% of US paper money has some cocaine contamination, up from the 67% mark measured two years ago.
The contamination "spreading" is solely due to clean bills getting in contact with contaminated bills. 90% of the US dollars have not been used to sniff cocaine. If 67% were contaminated two years ago it is only logical that in time the rest would be bound to become contaminated as well, even if cocaine had seized to exist completely.
I am the lawn!
There are so many sources of cocaine and like substances in our society that it's no wonder it can be found everywhere (looking at currency is more sexy than say, doorknobs, and I'd imagine the same level of contamination), legal and otherwise. Benzocaine, for example, is a common numbing agent for oral use that is in the same chemical family. So is novacaine. They just don't have the popular cachet, but I'd be pleasantly surprised if the testing used could distinguished between them. I imagine if you tested currency for benzodiazepines (valium and the like) or SSRIs (Prozac and the like) or beta blockers or digitalis or any commonly prescribed drug, you'd find near 100% contamination as well. BFD. People use cocaine and other drugs both medically and recreationally. News at 11.
I'd be much, much more interested to know how much of the currency showed evidence of, say, uranium or plutonium. Those are supposed to be scarce, really, really scarce.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Drugs are a CASH business. It is one of the last CASH ONLY businesses out there. Most other people are taking Checks, Visa, and Debit Cards as primary sources of transactions, leaving Cash a fourth level barely used.
I would not suprise me to see this trend go upwards, and eventually some idiot politician will suggest that we get rid of cash. Which will be followed up by some Christian suggesting that is the Mark of the Beast ....
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
except your local 'law & order' politician looking to score votes in the upcoming election. And here in the States, there's always an upcoming election...
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
I'm going to take the China and Japan stats with a grain of salt given that I believe the US dollar to be THE official currency of the coke business.
If you take that into account, and factor in unavoidable cross contamination there's really no value in this study.
Cocaine is NOT a harmless drug, it kills people and robs them of a liveliehood at a far greater rate than almost any other drug. It is insanely addictive and knowing a couple of friends who have struggled with it I can only hope for your own sake you never try it.
Sorry, but I could say the exact same thing about liquor. Ever been to an AA meeting? Alcohol ruins more lives than any other drug in the USA. And yet it's legal.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Dude, drug prohibition is bad no matter which drug you choose. Even heroin, as bad as it is, isn't ha;f as bad as the prohibition that tries to ban it.
It all based on the idea that if you make people desperate enough, they will quit. Not entirely incorrect, some recent research shows that people quit drugs almost entirely for practical reasons.
What they ignore is the problems caused by making people desperate are worst than the original addiction. Swiss studies have shown that simply providing heroin at a price similar to what it would be on the open market decreased the amount of income that the study subjects took in through other illegal activities by 90%, in a few weeks.
Its been found they can hold down jobs (much like many alcoholics do), they can afford their habbit, afford food, etc.
Simply put, prohibition is a broken model from the very start. Cannabis is simply the largest (more cannabis smokers in the US than all other illegal drug users combined), and the one with the most ridiculous lies spread about it.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I'd just like to say that the "War on Drugs" has been a great use of our taxpayer dollars. Very effective. Good thing we're spending so much money keeping people in prison instead of paying for medical care. Yay us.
So the point is that the contamination has increased.
Perhaps, but that may not mean that the cocaine industry is increasing, if it was say 40% in 1985, pretend that same 40% is still in circulation, the now 90% contamination may simply be from newer/more bills touching the original 40%... how old is your wallet? When is the last time you bothered to wash it? (especially since most are leather) I bet quite a few people have wallets/purses/etc that are 10 years old, all with "traces" of cocaine in them spreading to new bills put in them.
What about other factors like ATM and cash registers, the bags the money is put in by banks for travel/dispersal, when is the last time they were washed, most of those are (the machines as well) are probably a decade old or more.
What part of the Iran-Contra business did you fail to fully understand, 30 years ago? It's only worse, today.
ALL USD is tainted by Cocaine.
And by child slavery, forced prostitution and slaughter of innocents. Viva Roma!
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Hmm...well, that would go a LONG way in explaining our current financial/banking situation.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Yes, that's quite possible. I'm also sure that their measurement floor of .006 micrograms has a lot to do with it - I'm relatively certain that such amounts were all but undetectable in the 1980s for example.
And, for the record, I'm not (as the article is) suggesting that "contamination" = "use". The article is making a ridiculous assumption, on that we certainly agree.
I think the explanation is far simpler. Population increases (money changing hands faster), increases in detection equipment so we can detect increasingly tiny contamination, more machines handling money so the machines can get contaminated and spread the contamination further, etc etc etc.
Douglas Adams was right. Eliminating phone sanitizers is a really bad idea. Recall the "B" Ark!
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
You guys are all missing the obvious... What do you think the press-operators at the U.S. Mint do on their breaks in the paper storage room?
Except, the average lifespan of a paper note is about 18 months depending on the denomination. Very few 1985 bills remain in circulation today.
(which, btw, is the argument for using coinage instead. Coins last *much* longer than paper money, and usually have a fraction of their face value in metals content (which provides some pressure against inflation, for obvious reasons) but that's an argument for another day, dollar coin refusers.)
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Ah, but - with the levels they're measuring, contact contamination between notes *must* be an issue. While the notes themselves won't be in circulation, that doesn't necessarily mean that the contamination half-life isn't longer than a given bill's circulation life.
Reality is the ultimate Rorschach.
In order to achieve this level on contamination, one needs to look to the source. Clearly this explains where all the bank bailout money went.... coke parties for all the bankers.
People have an average lifespan of less than 80 years. So it's unlikely that a communicable disease would last for more than a couple centuries, right?
Haven't we already known this for decades now? Is it a slow news Monday or something?
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Pretty narrow minded statement there. In reality, it is a good way to compare which countries are using cocaine, and possibly even how often. I would be willing to bet that you find it more on higher valued bills, and finding it on lower valued bills is probably an indicator that the less affluent are also using it. Those are just examples I thought up right now (didn't read article because I've read about this before) and I'm sure someone who actually does this for a living could be even more creative.
There is more to science than physics!
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