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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."
... be using where's george to plan their next drug busts?
It really really pisses me off at the Canadian border.... I cross it frequently and have been stopped several times for the "bonus interrogation". Every single time they run my money through their machine and, of course, it comes up positive for cocaine. Then they try to intimidate me about it.
And every single time, I say "good luck with that in court -- I'll have my lawyer test the judge's wallet and your wallet. ALL the money is contaminated because the drug war is an utter failure. Are we done yet?"
Now in Dubai... hell, any other country, I'd probably throw away my wallet, put all money in electronics, and arrive naked any more. Stupid, stupid world....
Don't get caught with US dollars on you in Dubai.
That's a damn good point, actually... So why isn't there a constant stream of arrests in that country, given that they are able to detect absolutely minute traces of drugs on a person? There must be plenty of people travelling through there carrying dollar bills.
I would imagine that its both that AND then having that money rub up against other money as it goes into you wallet and then to the bank, and then through mechanical counting machines. How sensitive is the test? How many bills could one "nose straw" collect?
This is, btw, nothing new. I read this same statistic in an article on civil property seizure 10 years ago. Its been known for years.... the police can confiscate any cash you have, at any time. If even one bill tests positive for cocaine, its all suspect.
But its civil court, so no need to worry. They have to show a "preponderance of evidence" that it was used for something illegal. ALl you have to do is prove that it wasn't. Your not going to let essentially being guilty until proven innocent deter you are you? No worries though, its not criminal.... so all you lose is your cash.
Sounds fair doesn't it?
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Actually, it's suggesting that there's a 90% chance any single bill has gone through a cocaine user's hands at least once in its lifetime.
If an average bill had changed hands, say, 10 times, then it comes to about 20% rather than 90%. (80% of non-contamination ^ 10 people = 10.7% chance it's still not contaminated. Thus about 90% of bills would be contaminated in this case.)
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
In other words, drugs are illegal, and atrocities occur, thus making drugs legal would prevent the atrocities.
inb4 "correlation is not causation"...
I'm going to post AC for my own reasons.
For what it's worth, and this is entirely my own experience, of course, I kicked my coke habit for a myriad of reasons. First, I was running out of money. Second, I was making more stupid decisions in other areas of my life. Third, and finally, it was seriously affecting my health, and I knew it was going to kill me.
Furthermore, particularly speaking with that drug, if it were to be "more affordable," holding down a job and being addicted to that stuff is, in my opinion, impossible. The only thing being high promotes from a user's point of view, the only desire you really have, is either maintaining or increasing that high for the pleasure it provides. And the energy the drug provides creates a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy... you can literally use it until it kills you, and it honestly seems like a good idea.
The threshold for dogs to identify a scent can be as low as a few molecules. (I forget what it is for cocaine, but it's a very small number.) You gotta wonder how much "drug money" was just some poor slob carrying his life's savings, either through distrust of the banks (which is still common with foreigners) or being on his way to purchase something with cash.
Example: http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/12/1296.asp
Given that large cash transactions are now considered "probable cause", add in the positive from the drug-sniffing dog, and it may not matter how innocent you are.
Related thought: people who handle money all day long, like cashiers, may be exposed to enough cocaine that they could conceiveably test positive, or at least dog-sniff positive.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Another possible factor is that direct deposits, online banking, debit, and credit cards, have made it so that many people do not need to carry cash. I'm curious what percent of the actual paper bills in wallets are there because that is the smartest way to pay for illegal drugs.
And any handler can claim his dog "hit" on something as well, and use that as probable cause to confiscate the loot. And if someone was to loudly protest the confiscation of their money at some "random courtesy checkpoint", the cops can just shoot you and claim you made a "threatening furtive gesture" or were "interfering" or "resisting some lawful order" or anything else in cop CYA speak they dream up.
The point being made was, in some areas the cops use this "dog drug hit" BS as an excuse to outright rob people and get away with it or for intimidation to get people to confess to something else or whatever. They even go so far as to terrorize school kids with these dogs inside the schools. It's a con more than anything else. And it can be even worse than that for some people with phony dog-police type work
For legitimate rescue, I think dogs are great, useful, for most anything else as it intersects police work...starts to get wonky quickly.
Of course I am also in favor of ending the retarded prohibition laws, because they just cause more harm than good. If a 200 dollar day coke or smack or whatever habit was legal, it might cost all of two bucks, and I don't think there'd be much in the way of crime associated with it like it is today. It would still be technically "bad" IMO, the habit and what it does to people, but we as a society would get rid of a lot of the vast collateral damage associated with it being illegal.
Hate to burst anyone's bubble, but way back in the late '80s, the Feds were confiscating money in Dade County, FL if they found traces of cocaine on it, based on a theory that only money related to active drug dealing would be contaminated. For reasons I never understood, the task of calling them on this idiocy fell to the Coroner's office. They collected money of all denominations from cities around the US and a few foreign locations (I recall one was London). Their criterion for identifying cocaine was GC/MS analysis. Their summary result was that all US paper currency tested except "SOME" brand new bills fresh from banks were contaminated with identifiable cocaine. I read that as well over 90%. I was finally able to Google a legitimate reference to this information.
Please focus on the last two paragraphs.
From a Los Angeles Times article dated 1994 (http://articles.latimes.com/1994-11-13/local/me-62172_1_drug-money?pg=1):
"In its decision, the appeals court relied on uncontradicted evidence that more than three of every four bills circulating in Los Angeles were tainted with drug residue.
That evidence was provided by Ojai-based forensic toxicologist Jay B. Williams, who said he had done numerous studies since 1982 that turned up drugs on samples of $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100 bills taken from throughout the West--from banks, casinos, stores and restaurants.
Williams, who has specialized in drug and alcohol tests for 27 years, said last week that the percentage of contaminated bills ranged from 15% in Bozeman, Mont., to a little more than 75% in Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
The bills he tested contained quantities of cocaine as small as a nanogram, meaning one-billionth of a gram, to as much as a milligram, one-thousandth of a gram.
Williams' tests are consistent with other research nationwide. In one study, Florida researchers analyzed 135 bills gathered randomly from cities around the United States; all but four tested positive for cocaine.
One of those researchers, Lee Hearn, now the chief toxicologist for the medical examiner's office in Dade County, Fla., said: "The only bills that didn't have contamination were crisp new ones that had limited circulation, if any at all."
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