OT: Snorting Coke - favorite pastime of British with bucks

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496 out of every 500 British bills analyzed had traces of cocaine! Sheeesh, that makes Americans look like boy scouts.

tootin with the big bucks

-- @ (@@@.@), October 05, 1999

Answers

Actually, that's LONDON bills, not British in general. I think if you check, you'll find similar statistics for, say, Los Angeles or Miami, or any other large US city.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), October 05, 1999.

In fact:

Most $1 bills have traces of cocaine, research finds

URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v97.n425.a06.html

Newshawk: Steve Young (theyoungfamily@worldnet.att.net) Pubdate: 24 Sep 1997

Source: Chicago Tribune Metro Dupage

Page: Sec. 2, p. 6

Contact: tribletter@aol.com

Most $1 bills have traces of cocaine, research finds

By Ted Gregory Tribune Staff Writer

Two and a half years ago, Argonne National Laboratory chemist Jack Demirgian was in Miami and Houston testing cocainedetection equipment.

Then the Office of National Drug Control Policy offered him an assignment with a little more intrigue. His mission, and he chose to accept it, was to determine the level of cocaine contamination in single dollar bills.

Their findings, recently released in an Argonne journal, have surprised most of the experts. A total of 78 percent of the smalldenomination bills in the Chicago area are tainted with cocaine. Beyond the startling , high percentage, Demirgian's research is expected to hurt defense cases of suspects charged with drug trafficking.

"That does surprise me because dollar bills are pretty much out of the drug trade," said Art Martinez, deputy director of the Metropolitan Enforcement Group of Cook County. "It's like pennies in your pocket. If somebody shows up with dollar bills to buy drugs even fives or tens people don't want to deal with them."

Added Wayne Wiebel, and epidemiology professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and coordinator of the federal drug trend monitoring program: "It is certainly noteworthy, and I think it shows how pervasive cocaine is in our society. There's a lot of this crap around."

Demirgian would agree, particularly when considering that the average life of a dollar bill in general circulation is 18 months, according to the Federal Reserve.

But, his scrutiny of the dollar bills yielded other important findings. Demirgian discovered that U.S. dollar bills are extremely fibrous. When cocaine comes in contact with the bills, the crystals rub off quickly or embed themselves deeply into what Demirgian called "fiber cages" of the bills.

The fiber serves as something akin to several layers of chainlink fence around the trace amounts of cocaine crystals that penetrate the bill, which makes it virtually impossible for the cocaine to escape through routine contact with hands or other dollar bills, Demirgian said.

"It acts almost like a hacksaw blade," he said of the fiber, "and once it falls in there, it's hard for it to get out."

That characteristic is expected to help defuse the contentions of attorneys representing drugtrafficking suspects. The attorneys, who often blame cocainecontaminated bills when the substance is found on the suspect's hands, will have a tougher time making that argument, Demirgian said.

In fact, concern over an increasing number of attorneys using that defense prompted the drug czar's office to ask Demirgian to undertake the research, he said.

To gather the dollars, Demirgian and a couple of assistants fanned out to 12 spots in the west suburbs and one spot in Wisconsin, collecting 278 $1 and $2 bills.

The researchers tapped several resources, including one of Demirgian's daughters. He told his daughter, then attending Downers Grove South High School, that he would give a $10 bill for every eight single dollars given to him from the school cafeteria. He was overwhelmed with singles.

The team also collected dollar bills from Downers Grove North High School and one of the Glenbard High Schools, which Demirgian was unable to recall. In addition, they gathered dollars from a bank in Darien, Hollywood Casino in Aurora, a Jewel Food Store in Naperville, and a cafeteria and credit union at Argonne, among other places.

Researchers performed two analyses on the bills one in which filter paper was wiped on each side of the bill and examined by spectrometer for cocaine. The other process called for soaking strips of the bill in methanol, from which the cocaine was distilled and measured.

The amount of cocaine was minuscule, Demirgian said, with the highest quantity in any single bill being 1.04 milligrams or about the weight of a scrap of paper 3 millimeters long by 3 millimeters wide.

Previous studies have been undertaken, Demirgian and others said, but those studies have focused on largedenomination bills. Martinez said statistics made available to drug enforcement agencies show that about 90 percent of all $100 bills are contaminated with cocaine.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), October 05, 1999.


That's too bad. Alot of parkinson's disease cases will unfold due to cocaine abuse. The human body has like 250,000 dopamine cells and cocaine kills dopamine cells. They are not replacable and after they have been greatly reduced, parkinson's disease sets in.

-- dopamine cell watcher (dopamine@cocaine.abuse), October 05, 1999.

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