NEW ORLEANS -- It's illegal, addictive and most of us are carrying it around in our wallets. Scientists have known for years that the vast majority of U.S. paper money contains small amounts of cocaine. Now Eyewitness News puts the theory to the test, testing bills from across the metro area for drugs.
The average U.S. paper bill stays in circulation for nearly two years. On its journey from hand to hand, bank to convenience store, and in change back to you, the money picks up a lot of dirt, germs and, according to a recent study, something illegal as well.
“About 90 to 95 percent of all bills have traces of cocaine on them,” said Stassi Dimaggio, a Xavier University chemist.
The study presented this summer to the American Chemical Society found that about nine in 10 U.S. bills contained micro-amounts of the illegal drug. That's a nearly 20 percent jump compared to a similar study conducted two years ago.
So how do we stack up to the national average? Eyewitness News put some New Orleans money to the same test.
We got $100 worth of $20, $10, $5 and $1 bills at five different locations across the metro area. Random bills from cash registers in Slidell, New Orleans East, Uptown, Harvey and Kenner provided the samples.
We gave the money, in separate envelopes, to Dimaggio for testing at Xavier.
"We extracted everything off of the bills and then we did an organic extraction to try and find compounds, like most of your major drugs would fall into,” she said.
The samples were then loaded into a machine for identification.
“We ran them into an instrument that separated the compounds and then analyzed each compound for a molecular weight fragmentation pattern, which is considered a molecular fingerprint.”
Dimaggio said, like the national study, her tests found cocaine on most of our money.
“We had four of the five samples of $20, so 80 percent show up as definitely positive for traces of cocaine,” she said.
Dimaggio said that 80 percent of the smaller bills also had traces of the drug. She found the highest concentrations of cocaine on the dollars collected in Uptown and Kenner. Harvey was the only place where no cocaine showed up on the money, although there were traces of another drug on the bills.
“We found traces of a derivative of andro, androstenedione the steroid that is sometimes found in professional athletes, inappropriately, so that was pretty interesting,” Dimaggio said.
Beyond the curiosity factor, drug laced money is sometimes helpful to law enforcement as a forensic link between the narcotics and a drug suspect.
State trooper Chad Guidry of Louisiana State Police said his drug dog has actually hit on money hidden in a vehicle, because of cocaine traces on the bills.
“On a stop that we make and there's a large quantity of U.S. currency, our dogs do give us an alert, or indication that currency has been in recent contact with a trained odor,” Guidry said.
Scientists have known for years that paper money can become contaminated with cocaine during drug deals, and directly through drug use such as snorting cocaine through rolled bills. Another theory is the drug can be spread by sorting machines at large regional banks.
Guidry said he's not surprised by the high percentage of local money we found with traces of cocaine.
“The money is transported through different people, through banks, grocery stores and so forth, also through people who do consumer touch or have the tendency to be near narcotics, so the traces can be placed on it,” he said.
So is the dirty money harmful to your health?
“You would probably be more likely to catch a cold from licking your dollars than actually having the effects of the drugs,” said Dimaggio.
