The Column

Monday, August 17, 2009

90% of cash is contaminated by cocaine

This news story is one of those that's been around so long it's growing hair. In fact, I wrote a column on it in the late 1980s.

But enough of that. For those who missed it, here's the CNN version, circa 2009:

"When the (ATM) machine gets contaminated, it transfers the cocaine to the other bank notes," Zuo said. These bills have fewer remnants of cocaine. Some of the dollars in his experiment had .006 micrograms, which is several thousands of times smaller than a single grain of sand ... Yuegang Zuo (a professor of chemistry at the Unversity of Mass. at Dartmouth), who spoke about his research at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society on Sunday, found that $5, $10, $20 and $50 bills were more likely to be positive for cocaine than $1 bills ... "Probably $1 is a little too less to purchase cocaine," Zuo said "I don't know exactly [why]. It's an educated guess."

Considering how inhalable drugs are snorted, I'm still wondering the percentage of bills that have, well, snot on them. But maybe I don't want to go there.




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