Researchers at Dartmouth have provided further confirmation of the popular rumor:

A UMass Dartmouth chemistry professor's study detected trace amounts of cocaine in 67 percent of the dollar bills researchers collected in Southeastern Massachusetts during the past two years.

"I hope this can give objective data so law enforcement can take the right measures to eliminate, or reduce, these kinds of problems and increase the community's security," Mr. Zuo said. [southcoasttoday.com]

I'm not sure what he means here. Obviously, the drug war is precisely the reason we all have drugs stuck to our money. The drug trade is a cash-only business, thanks to prohibition. So every time you reach into your wallet, the far-reaching consequences of our disastrous war on drugs will literally stick to your fingers. There's nothing law-enforcement can do about that, except speak out against this mindless crusade.

Really, if there's anything worthwhile to be learned from all this, it's that police must stop confiscating people's money every time a drug sniffing dog hits on it. Over and over we learn about naïve citizens losing their life-savings under our forfeiture laws, often based largely on that singular and clearly absurd criteria.

Having traces of drugs on your money doesn't mean you're a drug dealer. It just means you live in a nation with a massive, out of control war on drugs that infects everything it touches.

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