WASHINGTON, Aug. 18, 2009
U.S. Dollars Tainted With Cocaine
Study: 90 Percent of U.S. Bank Notes have Small Traces of Cocaine
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(AP)
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Interactive Substance Abuse In America Get the facts on a national problem. Find out where to get help, learn how drugs affect the body and compare state drunk-driving laws.
Researchers looked at 234 bank notes from 17 cities in the U.S. and found that 90 percent had small traces of the illegal drug.
Bills from larger cities, such as Baltimore, Boston and Detroit, were among those with the highest average cocaine levels. Salt Lake City had the lowest.
Scientists analyzed only $1 bills from Washington and found that most had tiny amounts of cocaine.
Yuegang Zuo, a professor at the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth, led the study. The findings were presented Sunday at the American Chemical Society's fall meeting in Washington.
Except for Washington, Zuo said he and his colleagues examined a range of denominations, from $1 to $100.
The U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing, which makes the country's paper currency, said nothing in the process would taint the paper with the drug.
"When it leaves here, it does not have any cocaine in it," Claudia Dickens, a spokeswoman for the bureau, said Tuesday.
The researchers didn't look at the same number of bank notes from each city. In all, they analyzed money from 30 places in five countries - the U.S., Canada, Brazil, China and Japan.
The bits of cocaine on most bills was so small that consumers shouldn't have health or legal concerns over handling paper money, Zuo said. Some drug amounts ranged from several thousand times smaller than a grain of sand to about 50 grains of sand.
Money can become contaminated with cocaine during drug deals, or when users snort the substance through rolled bills. It can then spread to other cash when banks process the money.
Zuo said his research shows an increase in contaminated U.S. cash. In a similar study two years ago, he found that 67 percent of bills had traces of cocaine.
Of the 27 bills analyzed from Canada, 85 percent had traces of cocaine. Eight of the 10 bank notes from Brazil were contaminated. Only a few of the 16 bills from Japan had the substance, and a little more than 20 of the 112 bank notes from China had bits of cocaine.
© MMIX The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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- Maybe employees at U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing are snorting coke on the job and it's getting sprinkled on the money as it is made. That's what that special smell of freshly printed money really is.
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- Geez with all the money laundering that these drug lords do you would think the money would be spotless.
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- It is time to dump the US dollar. Let have decent curre ncy like the Euro or the Swiss franc. Who wants to have dirty money anywhay other than politicians?
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- I was wondering where it all went...
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- CBS why do you still have this stupid story up? You originally printed it on Saturday or Sunday. It didn't get much response than, what makes you think it will be read more and commented now?
"U.S. Dollars Tainted With Cocaine". If you guys haven't figured it out, it is a play on words. The US Treasury prints the money faster than it can get into the hands of the cartels. They only deal in US large bills, and those monies circulate. The bottom line is you cannot buy cocaine in Euro's or any other currency. They don't want to convert because it would be obvious and the US Dollar is universal. CBS loves to play with people to see just how 'smart' we are. Gotcha! - Reply to this comment
- Maybe if we would LEGALIZE and REGULATE COCAINE(and marijuana) we could finally put those violent drug cartels out of business!
Find out why...
www.LEAP.cc
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition - Reply to this comment
- U.S. Dollars Tainted With Cocaine ... We know. In fact, we've known that for years. This is nothing new.
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- I guess fiat money is useful for something after all.
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- This was known twenty years ago when they started coming out with the home test kits. They had to go back and adjust them because companies were trying to use them and claiming that people were addicts when they were not. Why don't you do a study that is useful, like how long it will take Hussein to prove how many suckers there are out there.
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- Swine flu? America is infested with drug addicts. Must be the high price of health care.
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- What you folks don't realize is that for years, the federal government has used "drug residue of the currency" as an excuse to sieze funds... even though they knew that nearly all American currency was so tainted.
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Some government, eh? - Reply to this comment
