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ExaminerUp to 90 percent of US paper money has traces of cocaine
August 17, 9:21 AM · Meg Marquardt - Science News Examiner
If you live in a big city and are carrying piece of paper money, you are probably transporting illegal drugs. A team from University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth has found that bills from the US and Canada are highly likely to have trace amounts of cocaine, showing for the first time a growing prevalence in the abuse of the drug.
A worldwide study of bills from over 30 cities in five countries found a startling statistic: “cocaine is present in up to 90 percent of paper money in the United States, particularly in large cities such as Baltimore, Boston, and Detroit. The scientists found traces of cocaine in 95 percent of the banknotes analyzed from Washington, D.C., alone.”
What is intriguing is that a study conducted two years ago showed 67 percent of bills had traces of cocaine. That means there was over a 20 percent jump.
What has happened over the past two years that caused the growth in cocaine-tainted bills? "I'm not sure why we've seen this apparent increase, but it could be related to the economic downturn, with stressed people turning to cocaine," Dr. Yuegang Zuo, lead author of the study, said. Zuo hopes his study can help law enforcement agencies better understand the flow and growth of drug use in communities.
234 US bills from 17 cities were investigated. The results showed that “amounts ranged from .006 micrograms (several thousands of times smaller than a single grain of sand) to over 1,240 micrograms of cocaine per banknote (about 50 grains of sand).” How the drug gets on the bills is well-understood. Money changes hand during a drug deal (of course), but bills are also used in the consumption of cocaine as the drug can be rolled into a bill and snorted. The city with the greatest chance of finding traces of the drug was DC. Salt Lake City bills were the least likely to be contaminated.
Read more: http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-1242-Science-News-Examiner~y2009m8d17-Up-to-90-percent-of-US-paper-money-has-traces-of-cocaine