I have heard many times from many different people that supposedly every single 100 dollar bill and about 75% of 50 dollar bills have trace amounts of cocaine on them. Has anyone else heard this?

i heard this on the news (doesn't mean i know it's true) that druggies roll up money and use it as a tube to inhale the coccane and that leaves trace amounts

Yes, that does leave trace amounts. However, we're talking about individual molecules being detected for the majority of dollar bills.

Over 90% of all US currency has trace amounts of cocaine. However, cocaine is so fine a powder that it spreads easily from one bill to another in wallets, ATMs, money counters and such. This is actually in the Money Myths quiz. Generally, they won't test anything from their own quizzes.

There is no law that says trace amounts of cocaine is legal. Doesn’t this mean the police can arrest anyone having money with cocaine on it?

quote:

Originally posted by rigil101:
There is no law that says trace amounts of cocaine is legal. Doesn’t this mean the police can arrest anyone having money with cocaine on it?

No. That's pretty much what triggered the original study. The federal government wanted to make it a crime to be in possession of currency with trace amounts of cocaine. Their reasoning was only a drug dealer would have money tainted with drugs. The feds wanted to set a ridiculously low number, like 3 molecules of cocaine.

snopes.com: cocaine on money 2007 article

One from this year:
Scientific American

I have one more detail to add to this myth. I personally knew an officer from Lousiana who boasted to me that if he wanted to arrest someone - all he needed was money from their wallet. He'd nearly always find cocaine on it and that would be evidence his court accepted. True - he was a bit of a boaster - but I knew from other friends on Law Enforcement that this was possible. This was back in 1993 - but I am still not going to identify the person or parish.