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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."
Apples and oranges. Japan doesn't have Lindsey Lohan as a citizen.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.
Nope, sorry, has nothing to do with growth and flow. Merely that China and Japan are better at properly labeling and storing their valuable narcotics and opiates. Given the cost of the substance, you would think the American & Canadian coke heads would be better at keeping it separate from other things. But when you need to carry only coke and money with you ... the cost of that second briefcase probably outweighs the amount of coke you lose just shoving money and coke into one briefcase. Being able to do it in a frenzied haphazard manner isn't just how it's done in Martin Scorsese films, it's a necessary skill of coke users and traffickers. I wonder what "essence of G-string" levels respective countries have on their smallest denominational bills?
My work here is dung.
Don't get caught with US dollars on you in Dubai.
Error: password can't contain reverse spelling of ancient Chinese emperor
100% of folding money has traces of Cocaine.
Beat that.....
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
This has to be why people love the smell of their money. Just hold it up to your nose and sniff... and you get a minor contact high from the drugs.
... to money
when Bush recommended an 'economic stimulus'.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
... be using where's george to plan their next drug busts?
I roll up 100 dollar bills to snort up other 100 dollar bills. Its a vicious circle.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
Please, could it not simply be that when the money is bundled together it is cross-contaminated?
I don't know about you, but the cocaine isn't the thing that worries me - I'm more worried about the fact that 90% of the bills I use have been up someone's nose!
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.
From a global standpoint, both Canada and Brazil tested rather high...
Hah!
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..
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
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.
Come on - we want 100% from you.
Well, that helps answer the question Where's George.
Apparently, he's been some pretty nasty places.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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!
"Up to 90% of Scientists Studying Money Also Do Cocaine."
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.
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.
I'm not sure sure we should look at those nations as a way to improve law enforcement.
I say this because the reason it is low in Japan is the high quality of life and import restriction. (Its an island and everything goes through customs)
And China... Well China is China.
Not only is the fact drugs are taboo over there (remember the Opium wars) it is just that there system of law enforcement is quite different from ours.
And that perhaps no one has ever though to use a Yuan to snort coke through? Maybe they all smoke it over there? Inject it?
Or perhaps they use coins at the commonest level of transactions. Who knows... But for whatever reason you cannot simply say that law enforcement needs to look at those nations to why drugs on paper money is lower.
Either way, I doubt prohibition is going to resolve the US's drug problem. Black markets will always exist so perhaps it should be regulated and taxed.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
The only thing that surprises me about this is that it implies that 10% of US money doesn't have traces of cocaine...
The extra street value of cocaine being added to the dollar should make it stronger against other currencies.
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.
it's no surprise that the city with the highest level was Washington DC, where up to 95% of bills gathered there tested positive.
I always suspected the politicians were on crack, I guess now we have proof...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
is that it really shows how much the dollar circulates vs. other moneys. Yuan and yen are spread all over the world (though China is pushing for it to be) which would explain why these are at the bottom.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Imagine how high the percentage would be if the War on Drugs wasn't so successful!
.
Trolling is a art,
Yes. The reporter is stupid and annoying when claiming that the cause of coke on the cash is "well understood" and then proceeds to claim it's from (a) everyone rolling up dollar bills and snorting it, and (b) money changes hands during a drug transaction, "of course". Problems are, (a) dollar bills are probably filthier than coke and everyone knows it; and (b) what, is the coke not in plastic bags? Is the money transported along with loose cocaine rather than being exchanged for cocaine?
Dude! Dont' sniff it! Don't forget "ass pennies". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ass_pennies#Ass_Pennies "I've been sticking $30 in pennies up my ass for the past 11 years! That's 3,000 pennies a day; 21,000 pennies a week; 1,092,000 pennies a year! To date that's 12,012,000 pennies, 8 times the population of Nebraska. Those pennies were in my ass! You think you're better than me? Oh, you're not better than me. You handle my ass pennies every day. You pick up my ass pennies for good luck. You throw my ass pennies in fountains and make wishes on them. You give my ass pennies to your little daughter to buy gumballs with. You handle my ass pennies every day! All of you! You all handle my ass pennies! Oh, I laugh at you before you can laugh at me. Because your pennies have been in my ass. You hear me? Your pennies have been in my ass!"
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
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 did this test on the bills in my pocket and let me tell you the percentage was MUCH higher the 90%! Oh wait... No I remember why...
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.
Cocaine (the old stuff) is...pretty harmful. I'll certainly grant you that.
However, it's also orders of magnitude less harmful than heroin or crystal meth, and for that matter, less addictive than crack. (Essentially the same stuff in a different delivery vehicle.)
More to the point, regardless of how dangerous these drugs are, the 'legalize it' attitude generally comes from the desire to _lower_ street drug use. If crack addicts could get safe drugs and access to treatment, rather than drano-laced rocks and the threat of years in jail for trying to get clean, we might actually reduce the problem. (Also, this doesn't even touch on the effect of cutting into organized crime's biggest industry.)
I don't think anyone is encouraging coke (or crack, or speed, or horse, or...) use, but more people are coming to believe that it can be more effectively (and safely) controlled within the law, rather than without.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
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"
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?
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.
Scientists are studying drug usage by examining the contents of sewage. This would appear to be a very excellent means of measuring the volume and type of drug usage in a community.
Money wouldn't be good for this purpose because money is much more mobile than sewage, and because you couldn't derive good quantitative data from the amount of drugs detected.
Remember. In most states, "knowing" possession of drugs need not be proven to establish a unlawful possession of a controlled substance! Any amount of drugs possessed can be a crime. Please return your dollars to the U.S. Treasury immediately and receive "clean" money now!
I just hope I never meet up with a sniffer dog with an over-active nose while in an airport and carrying a wad of cash.
That chuckle aside, I wonder how long it will be before someone challenges a sniffer dog alerting on them by claiming it was due to cocaine contamination on the cash. If that argument were accepted, any subsequent search could be thrown out as fruit of the forbidden tree.
BTW, IANALNDIPOOTV [...nor do I play one on TV.]
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
So the study found contamination at levels of 0.006 - 1240 mcg. The first question I'd ask is if this is the same threshold they used in the previous study. (I would certainly hope/assume so, but it always pays to ask.) It also seems to me that a few millionths of the coke on the heavily contaminated bills could rub off onto their neighbors, so even if there was no increase in coke usage, constant movement through the system could redistribute it.
Alas, it's been many years since my membership to the ACS lapsed, so I won't have access to the original proceedings.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I always liked the smell of money, now i know why.
Once money laundering became illegal it started to get contaminated with all kind of substances.
I just can't understand how this story can be tagged "legalize it" at all.
Because it's not the job of the Government to protect people from themselves? Having just described everything that you did, would you try cocaine just because it was legal?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Without prohibition that would not happen. Don't blame the user, blame our government.
Until we can forego dealers and just snort the stuff from our banknotes?
Being that so much money contains traces of cocaine, think about this. The US Drug laws are such that if someone dilutes a illegal drug the entire quantity of the drug and the medium in which it was diluted are considered when determining quantity. So if you were to plunge a handful of bills into an olympic sized swimming pool, technically you've just created enough cocaine to lock you up for life.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Some of those addicts are even somewhat aware of the atrocities that drugs do to them and the people close to them, and still can't quit. Problems in Latin America, in that case, are a low priority. And the rest aren't aware of a lot of self-evident things anyway.
Two factors that need to be taken into account in country comparisons are the average circulation life of a note and the highest value coin in common circulation; both factors have a major effect on the number of times each note will be handled. My experience of travelling to the US is that elderly, scruffy notes are much more common than here in the UK, probably because we have only three values of note in wide circulation, two of which are distributed by all cash dispensers. Worn out currency is therefore quickly replaced. Also, our largest coin - £2 or $3.20 - is big enough to ensure that a huge number of day-to-day transactions (newspapers, sandwiches, public transport fares, etc) are made entirely with coins. Once a transaction is big enough to need paper money, it's often large enough for a credit card to be preferred. Our notes are therefore handled by far fewer people than dollar bills.
According to this picture ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rational_scale_to_assess_the_harm_of_drugs_(mean_physical_harm_and_mean_dependence).svg , from an article published in The Lancet), while cocaine is more harmful than alcohol & tobacco, it's only marginally more addictive than tobacco. So it's not like you do coke once, and then spend the rest of your life craving the next hit.
Fundamentally, the so-called "War on drugs" is a world-wide 100 year old failure that rolls on with the weight of a dogmatic belief in its own righteousness and moral panicking. Nobody is saying that being a drug addict is good, but it should be treated like a medical problem, just like alcohol or tobacco addiction. For the long story, see e.g. http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13237193
So basically the same as nicotine, then? Because that's how nicotine addiction works: it makes you feel a little happier when you get your hit, but the body compensates by moving the baseline, so it's followed by feeling worse when the effect goes away. Soon you're getting your regular nicotine hits just to get back to where you'd be if you hadn't smoked in the first place.
And more dangerous than alcohol? Alcohol withdrawal can and does _kill_ people.
As a nicotine addict, I say take _that_ Coke-heads. My drug has a lower LD50 (for nicotine it's only 3 times that of strichnine and about 8 times that of sodium cyanide), is instantly addictive, it has a withdrawal so nasty it's been actually used as a mild torture, it's so addictive it even occasionally makes people betray their friends and country for a smoke (no, seriously, it's been used to make prisoners break down and start talking), via vasoconstriction it causes strokes and gangrene and amputated limbs, it weakens the bones, it causes lung cancer... and it's not just legal, it's advertised everywhere.
(And yes, you've read that right. The LD50 for nicotine is actually lower. Which means you'd need a lot less of it to end up dead.)
Also... insanely addictive? Have you looked at some of the antidepressants and concentration aides and stuff that pharma is pushing on kids these days? Some of them make you happy for a while, but then move the baseline more than if you took cocaine and nicotine combined. The withdrawal won't just make you unhappier, it will make you _miserable_. Or the withdrawal for Valium/Diazepam is pretty much the same as _alcohol_ withdrawal, see above.
We're not just talking the popular meaning of "addiction" as generally anything you like to do again. That shit they're pushing is causing _physiological_ addiction. Actual long term changes to brain chemistry.
And again, it's perfectly legal.
So, really, I kinda feel sympathy for coke. Compared to this stuff that I smoke every day, or which millions of children are prescribed daily, Coke is the wimp on the block. It's like the kid that everyone else mugs out of his lunch money. Heck, the kind of kid that nerds mug out of his lunch money. And when it comes to the law, guess who is painted as the great monster? Right. You have to feel a bit of pity there ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Up to 90% of US paper money has traces of cocaine.
Title 21, Chapter 13, Subchapter 1, Part D, Section 844.
"It shall be unlawful for any person knowingly or intentionally to
possess a controlled substance unless such substance was obtained
directly, or pursuant to a valid prescription or order, from a
practitioner, while acting in the course of his professional
practice, or except as otherwise authorized by this subchapter or
subchapter II of this chapter. "
Carry cash? Go to jail.
You'd be better off forcing coke up the bankers' noses at gunpoint. Or maybe suffocating them in vast silos of coke on national TV.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Now we know where all of that wall street bailout money went!
All things are subject to interpretation, whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and n
Just going by number of people, a legal drug will probably always be a greater ruin of lives nationally simply because of much wider availability - alcohol and tobacco in the USA.
However, as grandparent suggested, cocaine is probably a lot higher than alcohol on the rate of "users who ruined their lives with it vs total users".
Who benefits from people being scared of unknowingly breaking the law by carrying paper money?
Anybody who wants to track a person's expenditure via credit card usage. Unfortunately, the list is too large to draw any conclusion.
And God I love Abby. ;-)
Just being silly here....
If 90% all US paper currency has traces of coccaine,
Govt. accepts US paper currency,
would that not lead to acceptance of coccaine?
I guess it would be acceptable, since we have to be high to keep accepting being taxed on every little thing in this country these days....
Damn, I'm gonna get troll Mod'ed.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
It's not clear, but it sounds like this study was more sensitive than the others.
Bill's can get cocaine on them without ever having been directly in contact with cocaine.
Bill's what can get cocaine on who?!? And Bill's thing can do this without "them" coming into contact with cocaine? That's freaking amazing! So does the cocaine get on "them" by some magical form transportation that does not involve physical contact with particles of cocaine?! This would be truly amazing!!
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
In other words, drugs are illegal, and atrocities occur, thus making drugs legal would prevent the atrocities.
inb4 "correlation is not causation"...
I'd agree with all those points...it could be anything...it's all speculation at this point. Could it be that money changes hands more frequently now? Could it be that there is the same amount of drug use, but because money constantly circulates (I presume that only when a bill is damaged will it be removed from circulation) all circulated bills will eventually be contaminated?
Statistics are all fine and good, but they have to have context and meaning. There's no way to properly infer cocaine usage just by the fact that a specific percentage of a given currency has trace amounts. Maybe a lot of people put very small amounts on their bills. Maybe a few people put very large amounts on their bills. How could that be measured properly? Context in TFA's case can only mean that cocaine users also use currency. That is all.
When a addict buys their drugs are they aware of the job opportunities that their money is creating in LatinAmerica?
FTFY.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
"...it's no surprise that the city with the highest level was Washington DC,..."
That's a surprise to me, but perhaps I live a sheltered life. Is the implication that being involved in politics makes you more likely to indulge in cocaine use or that being involved in politics causes you to exude cocaine through the pores in your skin? Neither of these thoughts are pleasant.
Veritas patesco per quaestio questio. Truth is revealed through questions.
I have been "searched" many times, but never to that degree.
I take the Washington hwy 539 or Vermont, North Troy on RR 243 crossing for exactly that reason. Avoid big crossings. I knew a place in Vermont west of N Jay rd above Jay, VT where there was a trail (big enough for a suv) that you could cross. It was Dr. Bull's property (a weapons testing facility crossing the border), but there was a time between when the Mossad killed him in Turkey in 1991 or 92 and 9/11/2001 that you could dive right across the boarder unnoticed (now it's blocked by cement blocks and a boarder post is within sight, plus the whole boarder line has been cleared as far as you can see).
6.8SPC TR of 550, l xwind at 6, drift rt at 26" drops 77". AT has 503 ft-lbs at 1403 fps. FT 0.86
On a some what related tangent, the next time you get a bunch of $100 bills, take a look at them and see if you notice any small images that have been stamped onto them. Lowl level coke dealers are notorious for marking their money. A lot of them have their own unique stamps that they use. It would be interesting to do a study to see if there is a higher percentage of contamination on bills that have been stamped, versus those that haven't.
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.
It's plainly a waste of time, effort, and taxpayer's money. Let's end this silly "War on Drugs" and return the money to the taxpayer.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
Especially $1 bills ... I am not surprised.
Higher than any other country! Short 3" cuttings of straws found in abundance in land fills.
...that one of the scientists involved in the study uses cocaine. The sample taken is way too small for any reliable analysis.
You know the old marketing slogan, "Only losers use drugs" right? The drug users have their own version, "Only users lose drugs."
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Well this explains why Scrooge McDuck swims in gold coins & jewels even though cash would be less painful to dive into. At least for swimming purposes.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
I read somewhere the average bill only lasts 12-18 months in constant circulation (can't cite source, so take this with a grain of salt). Of course there's still cross contamination, I'm just pointing out that our nation's currency supply is not a closed system.
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.
We should start a war on drugs. I bet that would put a stop to this, and without violating any civil liberties or overpopulating our jails.
Also, I'd think this number would be dropping rapidly as fast as the Fed is inflating the money supply. :)
This my just be a wild coincidence, but isn't 90% about the market share that Microsoft has for desktop OS installation? Hmmm...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I wonder what "essence of G-string" levels respective countries have on their smallest denominational bills?
Thanks, now I will be wondering what "Essence of stripper schlong" my 1's have...shudder
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Man i wanna be a ATM maintenance guy! you get free cocaine as a bonus while working!
FTA: But China and Japan were well behind the curve at 20% and 12%.
Ahh, but what if you test the Chinese and Japanese dollars for opium, hmmmm? Hmmmmmmmmmmm?
some recent research shows that people quit drugs almost entirely for practical reasons.
Yeah i stopped heroin cuz it didn't come in ready-to-use gallons...
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.
And what pray-tell would be "took in through other illegal activities?" Does selling the drug they bought legally which they otherwise would have bought illegally count in that reduction?
Citation please.
90% of the bills in my wallet have been stuck up somebody's nose. Now that's nasty.
Stating that 90 percent of all bills in the US--even those that stay out of circulation in large cities--are carriers of cocaine is most likely an overstatement.
So basically, we're not being given the real statistic, just a hyped up statistic. Have these people been talking to climatologists?
Jeez. Could I have my science without hype please? Hype-ity hype, wonderful hype!
--
Toro
It's always a good idea to have lots of laws on the books that everyone is breaking so if you get pissed at someone - ANYONE, then throwing the book at them is a good way to inflict damage/death. It keeps the peasants in line.
...
Thanks to idiotic politicians in Latin America and specially in the US, the drug bussiness is illegal and gives a monopoly to gun-ready violent people called "narcs".
Thanks to idiotic citizens in Latin America that actually supports this suicidal policy, we are worse than ever.
Get SMART and start demanding from latin american governments to legalize soft drugs (we will work on hard drugs later)...
Oh, and yes, stop whining.
NO SIG
http://www.drugpolicy.org/library/tlcnr.cfm
Thats the best writeup I have found at the moment. Interestingly, while it mentions crime participation as one of the questions that the study was looking to answer, it doesn't address the findings on that point.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I wonder what's going to happen with these drug sniffing machines they want to put in airports. Supposedly they can detect such a low amount like being able to detect a grain of salt in a pool. Also with those machines, you might get caught for pot if you walk by someone smoking a joint on the way to the airport.
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.
The Federal Reserve and it's bank notes already had a devalued
reputation. You know, Neel Kashkari etc. The conclusion of this study
is however very weird. One might even conclude that anyone carrying
Cash must be a Coke sniffer. It's no secret anymore that the hidden
rulers want to have a Cash-less society. The story here certainly helps
in fulfilling this objective. We just need to take care that besides
the vanishing of Cash from our Society, our Society itself doesn't
disappear as well.
Robert
--
Robert M. Stockmann - RHCE
Network Engineer - UNIX/Linux Specialist
crashrecovery.org stock@stokkie.net
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?
Clearly this is the result of increased efforts to curb money laundering.
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
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.
Why is this no surprise? New York has Wall St, coke is imported into many Florida and California cities, etc. The only thing remarkable about DC is the presence of the Government, and since so many people here (I'm a resident of the District) want to get high levels of clearance for their jobs, most won't touch any illegal drugs. Really surprised by this, even though I do know where to get dank coke ;-)
It is worth remembering that "up to" means "less than".
...I'm not concerned much if any over random bombs all over. So rare it is almost a non issue. That might change, but now..meh. Where I live and my lifestyle I am way more concerned over disturbing a yellow jacket nest, hahahah!
I am concerned over false flag phony "terrorist" attacks and using something like the bird/swine/human flu scare to give the government an open ended "emergency powers" excuse. Or more middle class ripoffs to enrich casino bankers. Or more cost increasaes in everything to go to fatcat energy traders with "cap and trade" non scientific wealth skimming scams. Stuff like that. Way more important and way more impacts "we the people" than random bomb attacks.
Maybe they can train dogs to determine when an official authority figure or fatcat big economic "busy-ness" weasel is lying. THAT would be dang useful!
"Look! Rover got a "big fat steenking lie" hit! Legal grounds for lynching on the spot!"
That's why I find them so addictive.
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
Haven't we already known this for decades now? Is it a slow news Monday or something?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Do I sniff a few false positives?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
he researchers hope that studies such as these will be of help to law enforcement ...
Best way to help law enforcement is to quit treating drug use as a law enforcement problem and start treating it as a public health problem, and release a bunch of resources back to enforcing laws that need enforcing. This kind of study can help that by demonstrating just how bad an idea treating it as a law enforcement problem is.
I can't believe nobody has mentioned this yet... In The Belgariad, by David Eddings, Angarak gold has the curious effect of making people want more of it, no matter how much they have. I imagine minute amounts of coke leeching from the surface of contaminated notes would have much the same effect.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
...they want their drug back.
Maybe they're saying we should legalize it, because in most states possession of any amount of cocaine is a felony, and it appears that 90% of us who carry cash are guilty of it, even knowingly guilty of it, since we now know that there is a 90% chance that each bill in our wallet is tainted.
What?
You don't understand. Prohibition is an industry in and of itself. In some places, the entire law enforcement infrastructure would collapse for lack of funds. I would guess that a full 20% of the world's economy is off the books because of contraband, including hookers and blackjack. The racial issue of marijuana in particular should be obvious to anybody remotely interested in the subject. And its legalization will not generate the very optimistic expected tax revenues, as its value will decrease dramatically(drastically?). Those who benefit from prohibition will tell you it's far from broken. The last thing a smuggler wants is legalization.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
..you have a point on the different uses. I like dogs, we have six now here on the farm. They are mostly companions (all rescue dogs) and useful when the wild dogs and coyotes come around. I wish even one of them was a herding dog though..eventually I'll get one maybe.
And this just in: Money tested south of the Mason/Dixon line is more likely to test positive for crank. Duh! One day hopefully we will realize that prohibition simply doesn't work and we'll tax the garbage and use the money for rehabs. I believe if was William F. Buckley that said it better than any person-" If I put a bottle on a table, with a skull and crossbones on it, and say "Don't touch that! It is poison and will destroy you!" and you do it anyway? Then you deserve what you get and I shouldn't have to spend billions trying to protect you from your own foolishness"
And he was right: I have know guys that have shot up JD and ditch water and drank brake fluid and huffed gasoline when their drugs of choice couldn't be scored. We gonna ban gasoline and brake fluid too? All drug prohibition has done it made it so a 15 year old, while not able to score a beer, can score any hard drug like crank within 30 minutes or less from where I live. Legalize and regulate, but give up this old tired prohibition crap. We have been at it for nearly a century, and lets be honest: Is there ANYBODY here that couldn't score dope in under an hour?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
There's a 2003 article on the BBC reporting similar levels of coke on German euros.
...that bacteria do a lot of coke.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Because money has cocaine on it doesn't mean it was used with cocaine. It could just means it was stored with bills that were.
Inventor, Artist http://www.Rubber-Power.com
I usually agree with you but I think you're wrong here. US Paper currency fuels an underground economy in about half of the world. It's our biggest export, and North Korea's too (though they print their own). During the recent difficulties in the middle east we were legendary for losing track of pallets of Benjamins simply because that's the currency that you use to get the locals to do stuff they ordinarily wouldn't. I think in Iraq alone we can't account for three billion dollars worth of genuine US currency. The power of the dollar extends far past where you think it does.
So no, while you can't pay your French taxes in greenbacks you can buy with them anything that matters, and the seller almost always prefers it to the local coin in most places. The "informal" exchange rate is almost always better than the official one.
/Spent a lot of greenbacks overseas. Prefers money that glitters and rings true. Don't get caught smuggling currency - it's not worth a year in a Turkish prison.
Or to quote Benjamin Franklin:
"It is a happy country where justice and what was your own before, can be had for ready money. It is another addition to the value of money, and of course another spur to industry."
I think he was a bit more cynical than he let on.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Those who know me will know that I am not very prudish about the use f recreational drugs, an increase in the use of cocaine is something to be worried about. It means that has become more socially acceptable to use cocaine, and I think that has to be a bad thing all around. Along with the opiates, the central stimulants - especially cocain and meth - are the most objectively harmful on many levels.
I also think that instead of getting hysterical and slamming more restriction on and increasing penalties, it is now time to consider not just a sensible form of regulated legalisation, but also the active development, by competent scientists of recreational substances that are reasonably safe to use. At the moment the situation in many countries is absurd in that you can legally create a "new" drug by making a minor change to the chemical structure of a well-known, banned substance. What this means is that you can legally buy something that is very close to, say, Ecstasy, but which may be much more dangerous; and nobody knows what the hell it will do to your body and brain. That clearly is the wrong way around. It should be like it is for medicine: any new drug should have to pass strict tests, and then be legalized under some sort of regulation.
The Chinese and Japanese bank notes are covered with Teflon[tm]....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... bank notes elsewhere don't have the same percentage of microscopic amounts of drugs.
Why don't you accept the logical conclusions of such an study instead of making lame excuses?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
..... that machines in other countries are not as contaminated? (assuming your theory is correct).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Lets listen to them when they tell us things we want to hear.
Lets condemn the numbers when they spell out the ugly malfeasances that could not be possibly true.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Sorry, you simply don't. If you are carrying too much cash in most likelihood you are trying to stay under the police's radar...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Why are people obsessed with cocaine use? This is a victimless crime. We would be much better off to just tax it and make it legal. Much better for the countries that consume it. Much better for the countries that produce it. Also, we could stop the drug wars which do produce real victims.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
I understand where you are coming from. However for the purposes of public policy, some amount of generalization is needed. You say your friend had no trouble getting heroin... but is that true?
How much better off would he be if it was cheap enough that it didn't make him make hard decisions? How much better off would he be if he could buy it at a known purity, knowing there were no unsafe impurities?
A regulated, open market is cheaper, safer, lowers the risk of overdose, lowers exposure to dangerous chemicals like benzene. etc.
Opiate addiction sucks, I wouldn't wish it on anyone or their friends. I don't mean to make it sound better than it is, however, I reject a policy that aims to do nothing more than make these sick people's lives worst.
I simply reject the policy of destroying the village to save it.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
It does have that effect on some people (which is one thing that many people forget, every drug affects different people differently. I have smoked tobacco a number of times, but never developed a habbit. To this day I smoke maybe three or four times a year) I know people who say cocaine does little for them. Of course, they tend not to become users of it.
I highly disagree that the ONLY thing an addicts wants is to get high. You yourself mentioned several things that become more important, so you stopped. Most people have other things they care about, addict or not. However, drugs are well... if your talking about the amount of money a person really NEEDS to live, the amount you need to take from them to actually bottom them out and bring their choices to the point where they have to choose life or drugs.... well.... drugs are cheap compared to that (for a while). Worst, drugs have a markup that makes dealing to support your habbit look very attractive.
In the end it just doesn't work.
Now... lets take another view. What if it wasn't illegal? What if importers didn't need to hide their imports? So they had no real reason to extract the coke and sell it in a mostly pure powder form?
Look at columbia where it litterally grows on trees. People there chew the leaves for a little pick up much like coffee. It could be sold in a gum for or in some other way... less exposure to benzene. No abrasive powders up the nose, lower doses leading to less tolerance.
Same for heroin. Why sell it in pure form? Why inject it? Only because of the price/benefit ratio. If the price of the drug comes down, we can expect to see people adding it to a smoking mix, or ingesting it orally.
Simply put, the harm can be reduced in many ways. None of those ways are available under the Prohibitionist Harm Amplification policies.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
It amazes me how many times I have seen old news passed off as new news over the decades. its about time for them to repeat for the fifth time that they have JUST discovered that the universe is not expanding at a constant rate.
www.Migrainesoft.com - Computer giving you a headache? We can fix that!
Nuff said.
www.Migrainesoft.com - Computer giving you a headache? We can fix that!
As notes are mechanically sorted for ATMs they are shuffled together at high speed... Amongst all the detritus that has fallen off other notes that have been through the machine... Since it was last cleaned.
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
Just earlier today I was thinking that some of the bills I had smelled like marijuana. There were only a few them and they came from my banks ATM but they had the distinct odor of weed. I don't smoke or use weed and I haven't been around anyone that has in at least a few years.
I thought I was imagining things and then I come across this article. Which may not be news to some, but was definitely news to me.
This could imply that 90% of paper money has been up someone's nose.
If it's Lindsey, Kim K., Paris, ok, but what if it's Charles, Chuck, Nancy or Barack. No telling *where* their noses have been.