Snow Me the Money

Irish Bank Notes Covered with Cocaine

Cash and cocaine go hand in hand. The powdery drug has a middle-class, even glamorous, reputation and users like to snort it through rolled-up bills. No wonder bank notes often carry traces of cocaine -- in Ireland 100 percent of them do.

Bank notes can also be used to snort cocaine.

Everyone knows that Ireland is the place to go for a nip of your favorite whiskey. And a pint of stout can be found on almost every street corner. But it turns out, cocaine is even easier to find -- traces of the powder can be found on every bank note in the country.

Researchers from the Dublin City University examined 45 bank notes in circulation in Ireland and found that 100 percent of them were contaminated with blow. PhD student Jonathan Bones and his supervisor Brett Paul used a specialist sensor technique to analyze the bills' cotton fibers for traces of the illicit drug. The largest residues were found on €20 and €50 notes -- the highest denominations studied.

"Our research shows that drug use is significant in society and that the problem needs to be addressed," Paul told SPIEGEL ONLINE. But, he adds, "drug use in Ireland is pretty average in international comparison, similar to the UK or the USA." Bank note studies in those two countries found contamination levels of 90 percent and 65 percent respectively.

But despite the widespread contamination, the researchers were quick to point out that their results do not mean that Ireland is a nation of coke heads. Only 5 percent of the notes had likely been in direct contact with cocaine.

Meaning that only a very few bills had actually been rolled up for a snort -- one way in which notes get contaminated. Other notes can reveal traces of snow if they were used in drug deals or even contaminated by other notes. In the Irish sample, one-third of the notes examined showed only ultra-trace quantities, meaning that they were probably cross-contaminated in cash machines or banks. Those which came into direct contact with blow showed levels up to 100 times higher.

Charlie has become increasingly popular in Ireland over the past few years; indeed if the trend continues it will surpass heroin as the number one problem drug on the Emerald Isle. About 2.5 percent of the Irish population use cocaine at least once per month, estimates Paul. But it has been enough to fuel a sharp increase in gangland violence in the country's capital Dublin. The 63 violent deaths in 2006 -- 27 by gunshot -- represented the highest level in a decade. And many of those deaths occurred in the shadowy world of drug dealing gangs.

Irish President Mary McAleese called the trend "a hideous, ugly development" in an interview in late December with the Irish radio station RTE.

"Who creates the market that allows these people to become so powerful? It is the people with the good jobs; it is the people with a great social life, with a fancy car at the door who are doing cocaine thinking it's a really smart and cool thing to do," she said.

But as the street price of blow continues to drop, cocaine use has begun to cut across all sectors of Irish society. Indeed, some have argued that legalization of the drug may be the only way to undermine the drug-dealing gangs.

Professor Paul doesn't want to comment on the controversial idea. "Our main goal is to raise public awareness and get a clearer picture of illicit drug consumption in this country", he says. "It's so difficult to find out the real numbers and testing bank notes is only one way of doing this."

Or testing rivers. A German research group made headlines last year by testing traces of cocaine use in rivers in Europe and in the US. The conclusion was that New Yorkers use more cocaine than residents of any other city in the world.

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