90 percent of U.S. bills carry traces of cocaine (2009)

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/08/14/cocaine.traces.money/

by networked • 10 years ago

60 38 10 years ago

edition.cnn.com

matheweis• 10 years ago

Maybe this is the reason for the false positives from drug dogs ;)

iRobbery• 10 years ago

Perhaps this is how they find large amounts of hidden cash, with the same drug dog?

ZoeZoeBee• 10 years ago

Dogs can be trained to the scent of many items, some are trained to specifically smell for cash. The TSA black labs are designed to sniff out explosives and not drugs. Some dogs are even being trained to sniff out electronics.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-197623/Dogs-help-sni...

quanium1337• 10 years ago

Here we go, the war on cash begins...

justinjlynn3• 10 years ago

begins? where have you been? the big push to debit cards and gradually making procurement of any reasonable quantity of cash (especially given inflation these days) almost impossible has been going on for ages.

jrockway• 10 years ago

I don't find it all that hard to procure cash.

jdblair2• 10 years ago

I really don't understand this. What's a reasonable amount? I withdrew $2500 in cash from my bank last week. No questions other than "how would you like that?" and "would you like an envelope?"

trhway• 10 years ago

Is it drug paraphernalia in your wallet?... 90% seems like a very satisfactory probability for probable cause

awqrre• 10 years ago

Therefor, if you have money, it's ok to do cocaine...

rl3• 10 years ago

It's nice to see they recorded the denomination of each bill. Too bad the article didn't go into further detail in its summarization.

The abstract[0] says $1 and $100 denominations were less likely to test positive. The latter is curious. Perhaps it's because lower denominations are more likely to be used by street dealers, or that $20 bills make up the majority of triple-digit ATM transactions.

It's worth noting that currency has a lot more than just trace amounts of cocaine on it.[1] Trace amounts of any common narcotic can create problems if probable cause with fur happens to get a whiff of your cash.

There is cocaine dust around the machines. These bank tellers breathe in cocaine.

Here I thought handling large amounts of cash was just intrinsically exhilarating.

[0] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18646272

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_currency#In_the...

simonebrunozzi• 10 years ago

Hmm... on [1], how can it be that they tested 10 banknotes, and "92%" tested positive?

bluenose69• 10 years ago

Quoting from [1]: "ten randomly collected one-dollar bills from five cities"

mtanski• 10 years ago

The abstract[0] says $1 and $100 denominations were less likely to test positive.

Most of the ATMs in NYC give me $20 notes. Sometimes for a larger withdrawal (300 or more) they mix $20 and $50 notes.

glaberficken• 10 years ago

I wonder what they would find if they tested for fecal matter instead, for example...

kristopolous2• 10 years ago

But how can I extract and collect it for personal use?

oxide• 10 years ago

wash a stack of bills and drink the water?

kristopolous2• 10 years ago

sounds like a party drug mix! can you believe people pay extra for such concoctions?!

iolothebard• 10 years ago

I just threw up a little in my mouth at the thought. Probably still tastes better than the bill brew you're suggesting :-)

muniri• 10 years ago

Great article. This is why I only carry $1 bills.

refurb• 10 years ago

I hate to sound like a broken record, but "traces" can mean amazingly small amounts these days due to testing sensitivity. Remember this when you read "traces of [insert toxic metal] were found in drinking water!!".

I don't know what the testing limits for cocaine are, but parts per billion wouldn't surprise me. For some metals, it can be parts per trillion. Ppt would he equivalent to one microgram in a cubic meter (one metric ton) of water.

snsn2828• 10 years ago

All I could hear in my head while reading this was the theme song for Narcos

b3h3moth• 10 years ago

Many years ago an Italian magazine[0] wrote that 100% banknotes of the city of Milan was highly polluted by cocaine.

[0] http://bit.ly/22d6yKX (ita)

acd• 10 years ago

How many persons does a US bill pass on average in circulation before its handed into a bank?

You are connected to with an average distance of 3.57 to every facebook user.

What is your average distance to a substance user?

JBReefer• 10 years ago

Probably a distance of 1 for basically everyone

hotpxl• 10 years ago

Dude. I gotta burn all my US dollars and smoke them.

90 percent of U.S. bills carry traces of cocaine (2009)

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