Contaminated Currency
An urban legend states that most U.S. banknotes have traces of cocaine on them, and is in fact accurate. In 1994, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals determined that in Los Angeles, out of every four banknotes, on average more than three are tainted by cocaine or another illicit drug.
Additionally, paper money in other parts of the world show a similar drug contamination, and studies indicate that they might even serve as a vector of disease, though researchers disagree over how easily diseases are transmitted this way.
Several theories have been suggested to explain this contamination beyond the predictable contamination due to handling during drug deals and the use of rolled up notes for snorting drugs. After the initial contamination, the substance is "infected to" other notes in close contact, often stacked together, in enclosed environments common in financial institution.
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Famous quotes containing the words contaminated and/or currency:
“A happy people I call them still, whose peace and genuine morals have not been contaminated with European vices; and whose errors are only the errors of ignorance, and not the rooted depravity of a pretended civilization, and a spurious and mock Christianity.”
—J.G. (John Gabriel)
“There is no legislation—I care not what it is—tariff, railroads, corporations, or of a general political character, that all equals in importance the putting of our banking and currency system on the sound basis proposed in the National Monetary Commission plan.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)