Fun Facts to Know and Tell About *Your* Legal Tender...
From the August 1993 American Bar Association Journal
"The mere presence of trace amounts of cocaine on a common object ... is insufficient to support a felony conviction of cocaine." Lord v. Florida, 91-2147.
"[T]he evidence of the narcotic-trained dog's alert to [tainted] currency is of extremely little probative weight. . . . It cannot be doubted
contaminated currency is widespread. The presence of trace narcotics on currency does not yield any relevant information whatsoever about the currency's history." US District Court Judge Thomas Wiseman of Nashville, Jones v. DEA, No. 3:91-0520 (April 21, 1993).
"The probability that every single person in the United States is carrying drug-tainted money is almost certain." -- Dr. James Woodford, forensic chemist in Atlanta. Woodford cites a 1989 experiment by Miami toxicologist Dr. William Hearn, who gathered 135 dollar bills from banks in twelve cities. 131 had traces of cocaine.
It also cites a 1985 study by the Miami Herald, which asked eleven
that prominent
local citizens to supply a $20 bill for testing, including the Catholic archbishop, George Bush's son Jeb, and Janet Reno. Ten out of the eleven bills had traces of cocaine.
Finally, there's a reference to an until-now secret 1987 DEA study showing that 1/3 of the money at the Federal Reserve Building in Chicago was tainted with cocaine. It's thought that cocaine is transferred from some bills to agencies' high-speed sorting equipment [...]
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