90 percent of U.S. bills carry traces of cocaine (2009) | Hacker News Reader

90 percent of U.S. bills carry traces of cocaine (2009)

edition.cnn.com

60 pointsnetworked38 comments

It's nice to see they recorded the denomination of each bill. Too bad the article didn't go into further detail in its summarization.

The abstract[0] says $1 and $100 denominations were less likely to test positive. The latter is curious. Perhaps it's because lower denominations are more likely to be used by street dealers, or that $20 bills make up the majority of triple-digit ATM transactions.

It's worth noting that currency has a lot more than just trace amounts of cocaine on it.[1] Trace amounts of any common narcotic can create problems if probable cause with fur happens to get a whiff of your cash.

>There is cocaine dust around the machines. These bank tellers breathe in cocaine.

Here I thought handling large amounts of cash was just intrinsically exhilarating.

[0] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18646272

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_currency#In_the...

Hmm... on [1], how can it be that they tested 10 banknotes, and "92%" tested positive?

Quoting from [1]: "ten randomly collected one-dollar bills from five cities"

> The abstract[0] says $1 and $100 denominations were less likely to test positive.

Most of the ATMs in NYC give me $20 notes. Sometimes for a larger withdrawal (300 or more) they mix $20 and $50 notes.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but "traces" can mean amazingly small amounts these days due to testing sensitivity. Remember this when you read "traces of [insert toxic metal] were found in drinking water!!".

I don't know what the testing limits for cocaine are, but parts per billion wouldn't surprise me. For some metals, it can be parts per trillion. Ppt would he equivalent to one microgram in a cubic meter (one metric ton) of water.

I wonder what they would find if they tested for fecal matter instead, for example...

Maybe this is the reason for the false positives from drug dogs ;)

Perhaps this is how they find large amounts of hidden cash, with the same drug dog?

Dogs can be trained to the scent of many items, some are trained to specifically smell for cash. The TSA black labs are designed to sniff out explosives and not drugs. Some dogs are even being trained to sniff out electronics.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-197623/Dogs-help-sni...

It may be true, but the Daily Mail is definitely not a reputable news source.

>Dogs can be trained to the scent of many items

I heard there's been some breakthrough in reading digital data through scents:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_and_Flo

Is it drug paraphernalia in your wallet?... 90% seems like a very satisfactory probability for probable cause

But how can I extract and collect it for personal use?

wash a stack of bills and drink the water?

sounds like a party drug mix! can you believe people pay extra for such concoctions?!

I just threw up a little in my mouth at the thought. Probably still tastes better than the bill brew you're suggesting :-)

How many persons does a US bill pass on average in circulation before its handed into a bank?

You are connected to with an average distance of 3.57 to every facebook user.

What is your average distance to a substance user?

Probably a distance of 1 for basically everyone

Here we go, the war on cash begins...

begins? where have you been? the big push to debit cards and gradually making procurement of any reasonable quantity of cash (especially given inflation these days) almost impossible has been going on for ages.

I don't find it all that hard to procure cash.

I really don't understand this. What's a reasonable amount? I withdrew $2500 in cash from my bank last week. No questions other than "how would you like that?" and "would you like an envelope?"

Well, let's see... Living in San Francisco. If you paid for rent, groceries, and every thing in cash you could easily require 4k per month. That just so happens to be slightly below reporting amount. Do this enough and you'll be suspected of structuring your withdrawals to avoid the 5k withdrawal reporting threshold. I know the plural of anecdote is not data but it has been my experience that if you try to use cash for everything it gets you a nice little chat when you come in to make your monthly withdrawals and a threat to close your accounts that they will not give you in writing (I've asked). This is not just one institution and $deity save you if you have even so much have even looked at a bitcoin exchange let alone transacted with one. That was enough for US bank to threaten to close my accounts if I did any more business with them. If you want to transact in cash, just try to do it regularly and in volume, for everything. You'll only realise you're in a cage once you've run up against the invisible bars.

What is the common ATMs limit in US? If it is 2000+, you can do couple of withdrawals a month to go by.

As far as ATMs go it varies wildly. I've never hit the limit on ones attached to banks though I've never gone above 700. The free standing one like you might see in a 7-11 or a mall often have a limit in the low hundreds to make sure they don't run out.

But I just withdrew 3000 from the window last week, as far as I know there is no limit beyond what they have in the bank as far as that goes.

It varies, but anywhere from a couple hundred to around $800.

The withdrawal reporting threshold is actually $10K. In my experience, banks typically won't prevent you from withdrawing over $10K either, though they do file a report. The report is just another datapoint though, and not evidence of a crime.

If I had to guess, you probably just irritated someone because of your withdrawal size combined with the fact that most banks do not hold more than $15-$20K in cash.

I believe it is 5k now: https://www.ffiec.gov/bsa_aml_infobase/pages_manual/OLM_015....

and I probably did irritate someone with the withdrawal size. They started making me request it a week in advance before they decide it was too much trouble for them.

I'm really struggling to see why you'd want to pay everything in cash.

Personally, I don't even usually have any cash. New Zealand is a bit different in that there are increasingly few places that don't take cards. Even farmers markets and food trucks usually take cards these days. Hell, the parking machine also takes cards. I can go weeks without using actual physical money.

Credit costs the vendor 3%, and even debit is still 50 cents. I don't care when it's big box stores, but local merchants always appreciate cash.

How much does cash handling costs, counting/paying in, insurance, fake notes, transport to bank, uninsured risks, shotgun robberies, still be less than 3% but not far off imho, we need something smarter than cash but not from giant ripoffs such as mc/visa/amex

It seems to me a more practical strategy for staying "under the radar" is to use cash for small daily purchases, for things where cash is more reliable (e.g., private sale of a used car), to help out a contractor I'm paying, and for purchases I don't want traced. Why draw attention to myself by paying my rent in cash?

It's not as bad as the OP states, but I deal in real estate and 30k+ transactions aren't uncommon for me. There is certainly a process for transferring that much. Typically the process can take an hour or so and it's logged with the government (FBI IIRC). You have to fill out a form and get the requisite approvals.

Dude. I gotta burn all my US dollars and smoke them.

Great article. This is why I only carry $1 bills.

Therefor, if you have money, it's ok to do cocaine...

All I could hear in my head while reading this was the theme song for Narcos

Many years ago an Italian magazine[0] wrote that 100% banknotes of the city of Milan was highly polluted by cocaine.

[0] http://bit.ly/22d6yKX (ita)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com