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."

Comments

So...

[SigILL]

Don't get caught with US dollars on you in Dubai.

So guys...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I see Plan Columbia has been a smashing success, just like all the other attempts at Prohibition 2.0: This Time Without Constitutional Justification.

.006 micrograms?

[gad_zuki!]

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.

Re:.006 micrograms?

[Chris Burke]

If anything, this is more interesting in our ability to detect small amounts of things than a social statement.

Oh well I wouldn't be too sure that there aren't any social statements to be made. After all, they didn't detect cocaine in most Japanese money, so it's not like its the effect of some world-wide minuscule cocaine miasma, or at least its one that varies by location and thus presumably by quantity in the country.

So what this tells me about our societies is that Japan is an untapped market! Oh man! I'm on the next flight to Tokyo via L.A. Though I guess I'll have to practice my balloon-swallowing first.

Drugs

[Archangel Michael]

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 ....

Re:Drugs

[bmajik]

My household has largely reverted back to cash-only for our commerce. It is easier to stick to a reasonable budget, the terms of a cash transaction are perfectly clear -- there are no double-jeopardy fee problems ["they stopped the check, then you were overdrawn. You lose"], and with the recent tightening on credit card companies, some of those companies are going to go after customers like me -- who _never_ carried a balance -- with annual fees or shorter repayment periods or day-0 interest assessment or other silly tricks. Not interested.

But the #1 reason to revert to cash is that it is relatively anonymous -- or rather, it is moreso than any other face to face currency exchange we can easily perform. I think it will become increasingly important that Americans can conduct basic commerce in a way that is difficult to tie back to individuals. The cost to gather, store, and analyze data will approach zero, as will the public's ability to prevent the government from doing so and doing so for questionable reasons. Thus, not contributing data is the most workable mitigation.

Good thing we had that "War on Drugs"

[eagee]

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.

Re:In all fairness

[natehoy]

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!