Cocaine is a very addictive (something that you can’t stop doing or consuming once you start because it is so pleasurable) drug that became popular in the 1970s and 1980s and still is used by many today (I am told). It is usually ingested (taken into the body) via (through) the nose in an action called snorting. Sometimes (I’ve seen in the movies, at least) people take dollar bills (US paper money) and roll them up into a small circle, then place one end of the roll in their nose and the other to snort up (to draw into your nose by breathing in) the cocaine, much like a vacuum cleaner. (A type of cocaine, called crack cocaine, or simply “crack,” is smoked instead of snorted. Cocaine can also be injected with a needle, like other drugs, directly into your blood.)
The US is a major importer (a country that buys a product from another country) of this illegal drug, which has been the cause of so many problems in Latin American and the US. A recent study reported in the New York Times found that 90% of all US banknotes (paper money) contains small amounts of cocaine. The amount is very small, which we would call trace amounts. Two years ago, a study found that 67% of banknotes in the US had traces of cocaine, so the amount has increased.
The researchers collected 230 bills from 17 different cities. Washington, D.C. had the highest percentage of bills with cocaine among the cities surveyed. For some reason, $5, $10, and $50 bills had more cocaine on average than $1 and $100 bills.
The US is not unique when it comes to (concerning) cocaine on banknotes. Eighty percent of Brazilian bills have traces of cocaine, and about 20% of Chinese bills.
The researchers noted that there was not enough cocaine to cause any health concerns, and certainly not enough to get high (intoxicated, affected by the drug). Nor does it mean that 9 out of every 10 bills in the US is being used to snort cocaine! Cocaine is snorted as a fine powder (very small particles or pieces, like flour), and spreads easily from bill to bill in bill counting machines (machines banks used to count the number of bills quickly).
The New York Times headline for the article online was “Those Hamiltons and Jacksons Carry Some Cocaine.” What is this all about? More on that in my next blog post.
~Jeff
Good stuff,
Jeff your blog is growing on me.Every single time you guys come with something interesting and appealing,and I am not gushing man. I mean it is not an effusive comment. It is what you guys are truly doing.
I am wondering how people can afford Cocaine . It is da..n expensive man. Jeff ,Seems like you are doing it in sequel ,so please on the second part threw something about money laundry and drug trafficking as well . They are some how correlated ,aren’t them?
Thanks Bro . I don’t want to set my hope high ,but I have a wishful thinking that maybe someday I can gain a grain of your knowledge . I know you are saying “dream on.” LoL
But, day dreaming about that is my one luxury.
Yours
Peter known as English freak ( among friends ,of course)
throw sth
Considering all concerns a person may become involved on a daily basis, I think is absurd to get involved into drugs, particulary in the most dangerous like cocaine. Someone very wise wondered the reason why many people can’t stop having precisely such a harmful thing, and why more and more amount of harmful substances will be needed by them,more and more frequently to get the same ficticious comfort.
Anyway we have to help people who wish to go out from drugs and begin again a normal life.
Best regards from Spain,
Julio (Jack).
I have never seen Cocaine at first hand ,but I saw in movies that cocaine addicts typically separated a tiny weeny mound( mound typically reffers to a large pile) of cocaine into lines using razor blades then snort it through a narrow pipe. I had no idea they do it with bill notes.Do you think the sh.t( slang for narcotic drugs)could be observed via skin. It is very icky bro.
How you get the Statistic data that point 20% of Chinese bills contains Cocaine, I don’t think it is true.
Hi ! Awful topic ! Only when I think at the word drug and I feel dread . It is something like cancer :
you do not know when you are ill and it is without escape . So many lives destroied , especially young people . I watched a movie with Michael Douglas , a very rich man , judge , with a very clever daughter but who becomes dependent on drugs . A very dramatic movie .
And now , like an irony of the life , M. Douglas has big trouble with his own son dependent on drugs ,
too. It is incredible , too sad . Like Albano with his daughter who is lost many years ago .
In my country , we have not had problems with drugs . But since 90’s many young people have used them / extasy , especially the richest . In my town , this month , the son of a very , very rich architect was found out by the police selling drugs . Awful !
All the best for you all and without drugs .
Tania
Hm, it’s interesting that bills contain a drug and it’s detected by an equipment. How we can measure a trace amount of the cocaine if it’s translated into number?
Thanks,
Balj, Mongolia
Hi, it is hillbilly again LOL
I am funny s hell ,aren’t I? I know you give it to me Doc
your posting ..Very controversial ,isn’t it Jeff
No worries, illicit drugs always causes upheaval.
Folks , good tip from Jeff. Never ever get any bills close to your nose
funny as hell
Dear Leslie:
Take it easy buddy . Focus on the sentence structures and words Jeff used and forget about the rest. He is not an expert on illicit drugs ,mate. He just has delivered what he has read.
By the way ,I got into habit of reading the blog and posting some gibberish from time to time. Jeff,I have to say your blog is sort of addictive ,but in a good way. No worries bro,it is not like I am holding anything against you. All kinds of educational Addiction suit me fine.
Peace out,
thanks for the interesting article,Jeff“
i dont even know that there’s 20% chance to somehow get contact with drugs through the daily life. that’s interesting. coz drugs are not soupposed to be appeared in front of everyone, but mostly would come to ppl who is likely have a higer level income and less alert to the bad result this may have caused.
does that mean the billnote with cocaine is more worthy than the one doesnt have?hehe“coz drugs are expensive“
seeing other ppl’s hand writting on the billnote is quite common than seeing drugs.
treasure life, get away from DRUGS and BIG TRUCK
Hi ! Now , Madona is in Roumania with the concert “Sticky and Sweety ” , together with her children and her much younger lover . Then , she goes to Bulgaria .
Tania
Hi ! What are you doing , Emiliano ? Drugs are an interesting topic .
We are waiting for your promt reply .
Tania
Here I am, reading all bloggers coments.
May be this topic is too sad to me as I have seen so many poor boys and girls dead and life has changed so much around everywhere that in fact I don´t know what to say.
Problems here begun just from 1980 more or less and before those years I know nothing about drugs. Here in Madrid a city where everything was
nice and beautiful, where we have been living so well, just from that time all started to change to bad.
I have seen boys and girls with the needles near my own house, they have a place near a public water fountain where they punch the heroin in veins every
night and so on. I have seen people smoking crack in the streets, going like zombies up and down the parks or the streets.
My daughters were very young them and we were very afraid of the way life was turning day by day. And after that the AIDS. Hundred of people died
because they have been using the needles together.
Since them to now everything is different, so despite no any family or close friend were touched by drugs or Aids, I am very concern about these
kind of things that changed all my surrounding so much to the worst.
Thank you Tania, all is just to begin and now I am writing about these memories that made my, our, world a different place to live. More dangerous
cities, people without soul inside and with the only need of getting their doses and doing whichever kind of thing to get it.
It has been a very hard time to live in a big city with all these sad events just beside me, so many dead and all our life changing to bad. May be I have live so close to all this that I am very sorry for us, for the way of living we have made, and I have no ideas about the matter.
I see drugs like a dark day without sun or light, I want my mind always ready to think, and I don´t know what is happening all around us. We lost our innocence.
Yes, I say the same like you Tania “all the best for my friends without drugs”.
I like Madonna a lot, I think she is a very inteligent person always changing her way of singing and doing new sounds, making good records and shows year after year.
My daughter Fátima went to Zaragoza to see her and it was great.
She told me it was an impulse as she likes her from the time Fátima was a child and listened to her when I have Madonna´s records playing aloud in home.
Even now among classic music I am listening to her very often and get all her new songs like a young fan, going the way everybody knows through the web.
I seldom noticed this issue in China, 20% is not a small number.
Very good and interesting stuff, Jeff
Sometimes, reading your blog can get me very HIGH~ ^_^
thanks
hi Emiliano,
I’m sorry to know what you’ve had experienced.
one member get involed with drug, the whole family may broke caused of that……i hope you and your family and your close frineds will always keep alert to sorrounding changing life (for bad part).
i was supprised that ppl can just use the drug in public, isnt that illegal? the similar scene of this kind of behaviour in movie i saw were all in dark place, never expose to places like park. i worried if it would leave curious for young chrilden to copy? hope not.
It seems incredible, yes I know it, but on those years of 80th or even 90th I have seen the boys girls or other people doing it in public places or when the night was
falling. Just at the sight of my windows in the street.
At the mornings, when I was going to work, I saw it crossing under the streets through some little tunels. Yes, there were so many people without anything that
they sleep over there and only have the drugs, crack in a little spoon heating it with fire, the botlle, or the needles with the heroina.
It was dangerous for the children to go to the park because you may find some needles on the floor.
Those past years were really very hard for everybody. No work, no Illusions, homless, and what we call here “Caballo” which was the heroina.
Thousands of youngers died because “The Horse”..el caballo, heroina, and the SIDA.
My wife and me were afraid about what may happened with my children, but all was alright with them despite this so hard times to live.
It was so bad that the Goverment punished the trafic but not the consuption of drugs, that´s true and I think it is going on just now the same law.
Thanks Kobe for your good wishes and yes we have been always alert about this matter that seems only true on movies but it was real life in big cities of Europe and
USA, on those years. Now I think isn´t so evident, as cocaina damage is more slow and you don´t need needles, and everybody is careful about Sida.
If the Euros were tested same way of Dollars, may be the amount of cocaine on them should be even more……?? who knows.
For all you that can read Spanish, here there is the liric of a very good song made in 1981 by Joan Bautista Humet, I think he made the song in the memory of her sister,
I am not sure of this, or may a good female friend of him that died by the heroina, it´s very sad but very good song. It´s just what was happening on that 80 decade.
Clara,distinta Clara
extaña entre su gente,
mirada ausente.
Clara a la deriva,
no tuvo suerte al elegir
la puerta de salida.
Clara,abandonada,
en brazos de otra soledad
esperando hacer amigos
por la nieve
al abrigo de otra lucidez
Descubriendo mundos
donde nunca llueve
escapando una y otra vez
achicando penas para navegar
estrellas negras
vieron por sus venas
y nadie quiso preguntar.
Clara,se vio atrapada,
abandonó el trabajo,
se vino abajo,
Clara,languidecida,
perdida en un camino
de ansiedades y ambrosías.
Clara,no dijo nada
y un día desapareció,
recorriendo aceras,
dicen que la vieron
ajustando el paso a los demás
intentando cualquier cosa
por dinero,
para incarse fuego
una vez más
esa madrugada
Clara naufragó
tenía el mar del miedo
en la mirada
las ropas empapadas
y el suelo por almohada
y lentamente amaneció.
If you have a spanish dicc., you may know the liric and all he said in the song was the truth. He was a singer and a poet and I like all his songs.
He past away november last year. emiliano
Sorry, here is the youtube address where we all may listen to the song “Clara” by this so good valenciano music and poet, Joan Bautista Humet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beBTORL0B8c
Now I´m listening to it, and have a strage and sad feeling with the song.
Hi! Emiliano , please translate in English some lyrics . I think they are interesting and very sad .
Thank you .
Tania
Hi ! I like the actor Kevin Spacy . I watched three times his movie “American Beauty ” . I have read only European critics . I should like very much to read
or to listen to an American critic .
And in Roumanian language we use and read something similar with “goal ” . We say [gol] and of course [goooooooool]. And the football is our favourite sport for children , boys and men .
Tania
Tania, yes, I think about the lyric, but it is a poet who made the song and it is really too difficult to translate it. At least for me is nearly impossible I think.
But I can tell you that the song is made in the mem0ry of the sister of the singer who writes it also, her sister died by the heroine I think by an overdossis.
He said that Clara started to be like an extranger between her friends and family, she lost her work, her friends, following a way of lonelyness, living in a world made by the drugs.
One day she was missed by her family and friends, and began to walk along the streets, doing anything by money to get her dossis.
He didn`t say it, but you may imagine what a woman do to get money….
And at the end she was on the floor, under the rain, wet, she died and slowly another day break down.
By the years he mad the song, too many girls and boys found this end in a public wc., bar, on a bunch in the streets, or everywhere and people get used to listen
to these news, and it was as like when we listen to accident´s cars at the weekends.
Now it seems that everyone has forgotten what the heroine did, now we have cocaine and sintetic drugs that our young or not so young get used to consum
in the disco or pubs or even at the school, or public feast.
As I said before, here in Spain, the country with the most permisive laws of the worl, and this is true, only is ilegal the trafic.
Of course we haven´t dead bodies in a bar, or in the street by overdosis, but all the bill notes are with rests of cocaine as Jeff told us above.
That´s a point of what is happening without seen it at all, because these kind of drugs have slow damage in the body. And they are cheaper that
was the heroine…….
The last news I heard was that marihuana did a several damage in the brain against the process of memorising and recording the facts we live every day.
So, people who smokes marihuana can lost their memory records very fast, and can´t assimilate knowledge so neccesary to live.
By the way, may I ask you if you are a young girl, Tania, you look so because you are so cheerful always.
Regards.
This survey conducted by New York Times makes me very interesting.
People’re normally using bills to snorted up cocaine that is a kind of drugs.
It’s so surprised to see that 70 or 80% of bills in the US have been used to snort up cocaine.
Why do people tend to become addicted to drugs more than the past?
As the society around us has been industrized, people tend to avoid the stress by using the illegal methods.
How do you think of the most effective way to resolve current problem?