Highest Traces of Cocaine Found on U.S. Bills

[raccoon]

Jeanna Bryner
Senior Writer

LiveScience.com 44 minutes ago

Paper money contains high traces of cocaine, regardless of whether or not the paper money came into direct contact with the drug. And U.S. bills take the top spot, covered in the greatest amount of the illegal powder, while Spanish notes are the most highly contaminated in Europe, a new study finds.

The findings, detailed in the latest issue of the journal Trends in Analytical Chemistry, reflect the popularity of the illicit drug, the researchers say.

"These findings should not be surprising, because cocaine and other drugs are traded using cash, which is handled by the same fingers that directly touch the drugs or wrappings," chemists Sergio Armenta and Miguel de la Guardia from the University of Valencia in Spain write. "Moreover, many cocaine users use a wrapped banknote to sniff this drug, so inducing direct cocaine contamination of the banknotes."

(snip)

German Euros contained levels of cocaine that were five times lower than the Spanish ones.

The chemists found U.S. bills contained an average of between 2.9 and 28.8 micrograms of cocaine depending on the year and city, with a maximum of more than 1,300 micrograms found on some 1996 bills...


http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20080805/sc_livescience/highesttracesofcocainefoundonusbills

[Occulus]

1. Snopes says there are other reasons why that's the case

http://www.snopes.com/business/money/cocaine.asp

Contrary to our first thought upon encountering this interesting little fact, that trace amounts of cocaine turn up on approximately four of every five bills in circulation doesn't mean the now-contaminated currency was at one time used to snort coke or passed through the dope-laden paws of seedy characters. Rather, the drug is easily conveyed from one bill to another because cocaine in powdered form is extremely fine. (This point would have been much more difficult to explain prior to the anthrax mailings of 2001, but those deadly contaminations taught even the least drug-savvy among us how easily minute amounts of finely-milled substances can be transferred from one letter to another, even when the powder is contained within the envelope rather than lying on the
surface.)

When a cocaine-contaminated bill is processed through a sorting or counting machine, traces of the drug are easily passed to other bills in the same batch. ATMs serve to spread tiny amounts of cocaine to nearly all the currency they distribute, as do the counting machines used in banks and casinos.

[raccoon]

3. Thanks for the link. Good old Snopes! nt

[arcadian]

2. Wonder what the preferred nomination is for using as a straw.

$100 probably, part of the high with cocaine is all the money that's being thrown around.

[Contrary1]

4. Gives a whole new meaning to

kiss your money goodbye, huh? :)

[snooper2]

5. I'm guilty of contanimating

a few of those :rofl:


doesn't matter the denomination; long as it's crisp

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

6. You Might Think It Makes Ya Look Cool For Snorting Coke, But I'd Say It Makes Ya Look Dumb.

[snooper2]

7. Yeah, whatever...

So I did some lines of blow 5 years ago...woo fucking hoo...

Get off your high horse- :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: