According to a new study, apparently the number of people snorting cocaine using our currency is on the rise. Traces of nose candy show up on around 90% of bills tested (95% in Washington D.C.!!!!), up from 67% two years ago. The least favorite bill denominations? The cheap seats and the expensive seats: $1 and $100 bills. The bills of choice: $5, $10 and $20. The results will be presented today at the American Chemical Society:
For cocaine users, a rolled up $20 bill may be the most convenient tool for snorting the powder form of the drug. Or so it would seem from a new analysis of 234 banknotes from 18 U.S. cities that found cocaine on 90 percent of the bills tested.
“Cocaine is a powerfully addictive stimulant and one of the most commonly abused illicit drugs in the world,” says chemist Yuegang Zuo of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, who conducted the tests and presented the findings today at the biannual meeting of the American Chemical Society, which is taking place in Washington, D.C. That city ranked highest in the survey—95 percent of the sampled bills there bore cocaine contamination—along with Baltimore, Boston and Detroit. Salt Lake City had the lowest average levels of contamination. “The examination of cocaine contamination on paper money can provide objective and timely epidemiological information about cocaine abuse in individual communities,” Zuo argues…..
Levels of cocaine ranged from .006 micrograms to more than 1,240 micrograms—the equivalent of 50 grains of sand—on U.S. bills, and $5, $10 and $20 bills on average carried more contamination than $1 or $100 bills.
Cocaine Contaminates Majority of U.S. Currency – Scientific American
