DRUG WAR'S FILTHY LUCRE

There you are, smalltime storeowner, operating the till, when a man with a
dog walks in. He steps to the counter and asks for a pack of Camels. Pulling
a box down from the overhead rack, you ring it up and open the cash drawer
to exchange his $10 bill for cigarettes and change.

Then, the dog barks.

Oddly enough, the man's expression takes on a serious look as he waves the
$5 you gave him under his dog's nose.

More barking.

Your peculiar customer then informs you that he is an off-duty narcotics
officer and his drug-sniffing dog detected dope on your dough; could he
please see the cash drawer? Confused, you think for a moment about
protesting, but -- not wanting to run afoul of the law -- you comply. The
dog smells drugs all over the drawer, and the officer concludes that the
money is tainted, seizing your cash drawer based upon the suspicion that the
money must have been used in connection with illegal drug trafficking.

Unbelievable?

The first time I had ever heard such an account was from a 1992 lecture
given by Cato Institute Executive Vice President David Boaz at Laissez Faire
Books in San Francisco, Calif. The particular account he presented was
nearly identical to the one I just fabricated.

Turns out, nabbing dope-tainted money isn't too uncommon. One of the
earliest of such cases happened back in the early 1980s when police followed
a pair of Mexican nationals to Atlanta, Ga., banks. As Sacramento Bee
reporter Michael G. Wagner recounts the story for a Nov. 16, 1994, article,
the two were arrested after buying nearly $10,000 worth of cashier's
checks -- just under the amount requiring IRS notification -- and were
"charged with conspiring to defraud the government in a narcotics
operation."

Prosecutors used money seized from the suspects' transactions to prove their
dastardly deed; the cash tested positive for cocaine residue.

Big deal, said their attorney, who bought a bundle of shredded money and had
it checked. The tests revealed that money, purchased from U.S. Federal
Reserve Bank, was tainted, too. Establishing guilt based on a standard that
would indict your local Fed banker if his vaults were checked didn't seem
like a great idea, and the judge ordered the pair's money returned.

Just last April, Broward County, Fla., sheriff's deputies nabbed almost
$1,600 from one Rosendo Louis, who was suspected of trespassing on the lot
of an unoccupied house. After searching Louis, drug-sniffing dogs
red-flagged Louis' money -- mostly small bills -- for narcotics taint. The
cops grabbed the cash -- to no avail. Just this month, according to the
Miami Herald, Circuit Judge Robert Lance Andrews ordered the police to give
back the cash.

"It is conceivable," ruled Andrews, "that anyone in South Florida who was
carrying U.S. currency would 'alert' a narcotics-sniffing dog."

To help make his point, Andrews referenced a 1985 Miami Herald story that
related the results of a test involving $20 bills taken from various
community leaders and checked for traces of drugs. Residues were found on
the bills belonging to, among others:

Jeb Bush

The Archbishop of Miami

And then-Dade County State Attorney Janet Reno

"Overall," says Miami forensic toxicologist Dr. Jay Pupko, "the money in the
general circulation has been contaminated by microgram levels of cocaine."
Not only do drug users sometimes roll up bills like straws and use them to
snort lines of cocaine, but, as Pupko believes, most of the money is tainted
initially by drug dealers counting stacks of bills. The taint, however,
spreads quickly, as Pupko adds that even bank tellers spread the residue
when sorting and tallying cash.

Cashiers and pushers shouldn't feel too bad about it, though. There's plenty
of blame to go around -- including the Federal Reserve itself.

Testing suspicions that drug-tainted money spreads quicker than either
gospel or gossip in a Midwest church, Wagner reports that in 1985, DEA
chemists examined money-processing machines at a U.S. District Federal
Reserve Bank, "where vast amounts of currency is routinely sorted."

The results? "In random samples of $50 and $100 bills, a third to a half of
all the samples collected had cocaine," according to one DEA chemist, who
added that "it appeared that hot money was contaminating the (machine)
belts, which then contaminated fresh money."

In a test that positively resolved a 1994 case for the defendant, Pupko and
fellow toxicologist Dr. William Lee Hearn collected currency from all
corners of the country, including Austin, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, New
York, Pittsburgh and Seattle, even going abroad to grab U.S. bills
circulating in London. All but four of the bills were tainted -- 131 out of
135.

"Basically, the DEA is conceding that this is a problem," said Pupko, "that
most of the money is contaminated."

Not that the authorities mind overly much about the taint. Filthy lucre is
still lucre to them; they'll seize it just the same. In 1999, Broward
County, Fla., seized $1 million that the government has since put to use
paying for various anti-drug, crime-prevention and education programs.
According to the Amarillo Globe-News, on Sept. 17 Texas police seized more
than $2.5 million found in the back of a tractor-trailer stopped in the
Panhandle. Of course, the truck driver disavowed any connection to the cash,
and, with no one stepping forward to claim it, the cash will likely be split
70-30 between the state and Parmer County. Two-point-five million dollars --
who can argue with that?

Judge Andrews, perhaps.

"Appellate courts are moving in the direction I'm moving," said Andrews in
his Louis ruling, "I think (law enforcement agencies) are abusing forfeiture
statutes. ... There is a lot of money involved."

Too much money, and the law is far too arbitrary if police only have to
prove that your cash might be tainted to pinch it -- never mind that the
greenbacks in their own wallets are likely tainted as well. Thankfully, with
the many precedents of confiscated money being returned when the charge is
based solely on drug taint, police may not get to keep the cash.

But, I'm afraid, that doesn't stop them from trying.