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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
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!
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.
"Up to 90% of Scientists Studying Money Also Do Cocaine."
No, the suggestion is that most of the paper money in America has been in contact with cocaine users.
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.
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."
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.
Plus every flat surface in any bar or nightclub restroom will test positive for either Cocaine or WD40 & Vaseline :)
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
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 have to put the coins in the proper coin slot. The really talented strippers can even dispense change for you.
"But this one goes to 11!"
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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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.
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