Most $1 bills have traces of cocaine, research finds

By Ted Gregory
Tribune Staff Writer

Two and a half years ago, Argonne National Laboratory chemist Jack Demirgian
was in Miami and Houston testing cocainedetection equipment.

Then the Office of National Drug Control Policy offered him an assignment
with a little more intrigue. His mission, and he chose to accept it, was to
determine the level of cocaine contamination in single dollar bills.

Their findings, recently released in an Argonne journal, have surprised most
of the experts. A total of 78 percent of the smalldenomination bills in the
Chicago area are tainted with cocaine. Beyond the startling , high
percentage, Demirgian's research is expected to hurt defense cases of
suspects charged with drug trafficking.

"That does surprise me because dollar bills are pretty much out of the drug
trade," said Art Martinez, deputy director of the Metropolitan Enforcement
Group of Cook County. "It's like pennies in your pocket. If somebody shows
up with dollar bills to buy drugs even fives or tens people don't want
to deal with them."

Added Wayne Wiebel, and epidemiology professor at the University of Illinois
at Chicago and coordinator of the federal drug trend monitoring program: "It
is certainly noteworthy, and I think it shows how pervasive cocaine is in
our society. There's a lot of this crap around."

Demirgian would agree, particularly when considering that the average life
of a dollar bill in general circulation is 18 months, according to the
Federal Reserve.

But, his scrutiny of the dollar bills yielded other important findings.
Demirgian discovered that U.S. dollar bills are extremely fibrous. When
cocaine comes in contact with the bills, the crystals rub off quickly or
embed themselves deeply into what Demirgian called "fiber cages" of the bills.

The fiber serves as something akin to several layers of chainlink fence
around the trace amounts of cocaine crystals that penetrate the bill, which
makes it virtually impossible for the cocaine to escape through routine
contact with hands or other dollar bills, Demirgian said.

"It acts almost like a hacksaw blade," he said of the fiber, "and once it
falls in there, it's hard for it to get out."

That characteristic is expected to help defuse the contentions of attorneys
representing drugtrafficking suspects. The attorneys, who often blame
cocainecontaminated bills when the substance is found on the suspect's
hands, will have a tougher time making that argument, Demirgian said.

In fact, concern over an increasing number of attorneys using that defense
prompted the drug czar's office to ask Demirgian to undertake the research,
he said.

To gather the dollars, Demirgian and a couple of assistants fanned out to 12
spots in the west suburbs and one spot in Wisconsin, collecting 278 $1 and
$2 bills.

The researchers tapped several resources, including one of Demirgian's
daughters. He told his daughter, then attending Downers Grove South High
School, that he would give a $10 bill for every eight single dollars given
to him from the school cafeteria. He was overwhelmed with singles.

The team also collected dollar bills from Downers Grove North High School
and one of the Glenbard High Schools, which Demirgian was unable to recall.
In addition, they gathered dollars from a bank in Darien, Hollywood Casino
in Aurora, a Jewel Food Store in Naperville, and a cafeteria and credit
union at Argonne, among other places.

Researchers performed two analyses on the bills one in which filter paper
was wiped on each side of the bill and examined by spectrometer for cocaine.
The other process called for soaking strips of the bill in methanol, from
which the cocaine was distilled and measured.

The amount of cocaine was minuscule, Demirgian said, with the highest
quantity in any single bill being 1.04 milligrams or about the weight of a
scrap of paper 3 millimeters long by 3 millimeters wide.

Previous studies have been undertaken, Demirgian and others said, but those
studies have focused on largedenomination bills. Martinez said statistics
made available to drug enforcement agencies show that about 90 percent of
all $100 bills are contaminated with cocaine.