Is Big Brother Watching You Bump Bills Of Blow?
Cocaine's a hell of a drug. It's the only one you blow money on, when it gets bad, blow for, and (funnest of all), blow with money. But can the government track your use on bills? Cops, man, cops! AGH!
Did you know! 90% of all money is contaminated with cocaine, asserts Slate in their lede. Furthermore: the rate was only 67% two years ago, and a panel convened on the issue of blow and money says that the economy has made more people do blow! Which, whatever, I don't believe is true for America, because people just smoke weed when they have a case of the sads, right?
Probably not. But in Europe: naturally, this kind of thing is a given. Furthermore, Ze Germans are taking a much, much closer look at the money people are using to huff the yayo, ChiChi. In fact, one country's doing more blow than any of the others:
The drug is often taken by snorting it through rolled-up bills, and its crystals happen to fit snugly between a bill's fibers.) After collecting more than 13,000 notes in eight years, the German team found that the most contaminated euro bills come from Spain-which makes perfect sense, since that country serves as the gateway for South American cocaine imports and has the highest reported rate of cocaine use in Europe (PDF). (An estimated 3 percent of Spaniards use the drug, compared with 2.3 percent for the United States.)
Damn. Yet another thing Europeans do better than us. Also, because the European Union got new currency in 2000, they've had an easier time studying this kind of thing than we have. But the most important part of all of this, which Slate buried the lede on - and I guess, now, I did - is whether or not you can get busted for having blow-covered money on you. Survey says?
Maybe. By determining a baseline level of currency contamination, scientists have been able to determine whether money seized from suspected drug dealers is dirtier than usual. Since most bills contain fewer than 1,240 micrograms of cocaine, anything more could indicate direct contact with the drug. According to one study, this method was 89 percent effective at differentiating between money that's just dirty and money that's got a bit of a drug problem. In the United Kingdom, at least, these sorts of comparisons are used in court.
So: show up with a roll of cash caked in coke, you might be in trouble. Other than that, you're good, bro, you're so fuckin' awesome, we're so awesome right now, God, man. God. I'm putting on my sunglasses.