THE DIRTY MONEY FOUND IN EVERYONE'S POCKET

DID you know that 90 per cent of all Scottish UKP20 notes are contaminated
with ecstasy?

No, neither did I. Not until the red light started flashing and the klaxon
went off on the new drugs detection machine I was to report on in Shotts
prison visiting hall.

Having my fingers dusted by a pioneering electronic sniffer device seemed
an interesting way of passing the time until the VIPs turned up for the
press conference.

Seconds later: BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! I was testing positive for MDMA.
That's ecstasy, if you're not a raver - and I'm not, though it was briefly
flattering to have it suggested that I might be young and trendy enough to
go clubbing.

The prison officers are nice about it. The amount of E the ionscan
spectrometer had found on my fingers - 1,850 units, according thescrap of
paper printout I now intend to frame - was still within the range where I
had probably got it on my fingers by touching money contaminated with
drugs, they said.

That is most UKP10 and UKP20 banknotes, the denominations used in street
drugs deals. It probably happened when I bought petrol that morning.

The readout would be around 4,000 to 6,000 units if I had handled drugs
myself. If I was a proper prison visitor I would now be retested, searched
and thrown out if I was found to be carrying drugs. I would then be
prosecuted and my prisoner relative punished as well.

I wasn't the only one with illicit drugs on my hands - a photographer and
another reporter were also contaminated with ecstasy.

News of the positive tests had apparently found its way ahead to the
visiting dignitaries, because the Scottish home affairs minister, Henry
McLeish, refused point blank to have his fingers sniffed. "Minister Tests
Positive" wouldn't have been a helpful headline in these pre-election days.
Especially not for any SNP followers: in the prison workshops a nationalist
lag had pasted a Salmond for President poster on the woodcutter.

Still, it makes you think. Are there really that many drugs around that the
very currency is steeped in it? Yes. there are.

Drugs is the second biggest global industry after arms. Drugs are behind
nearly half of all the cases in the High Court. Stealing to get money for
drugs accounts for more than half of all theft. Society, is up to its neck
in filthy drugs money made from other people's addiction, misery and death.
There is probably drugs on everybody's hands.

That's probably why the prison sniffer dog seemed to take such a shine to me.

Checked-by: Joel W. Johnson