DETECTION OF COCAINE ON VARIOUS DENOMINATIONS OF UNITED-STATES CURRENCY

The presence of cocaine on U.S. paper currency collected in many citie s in the United States has previously been reported. Currency becomes contaminated during the exchange, storage and use of cocaine. Differen t currency denominations are also rolled by drug users and used to sno rt cocaine. Illicit cocaine is widely abused and therefore the contami nated paper currency can be easily found in common use. A total of 18 bills were analyzed in our laboratory for cocaine. Ten $20 bills were randomly collected in Rockford, IL and four $1 bills in Chicago. An ad ditional four uncirculated $1 bills were analyzed as a control group. All bills were extracted with 0.1 M hydrochloric acid followed by soli d-phase extraction. Cocaine was identified using gas chromatography/ma ss spectrometry in full scan mode, and drug quantitation was performed in selected ion monitoring mode. A standard curve was prepared and do xepin was used as an internal standard. In addition, for method valida tion two levels of control solutions were analyzed simultaneously. Pre cision and accuracy values were within acceptable ranges. Cocaine was present on 92.8% of all bills collected from the general circulation. All $20 bills were contaminated with cocaine and the amount of drug va ried from 0.14 to 10.02 mu g of cocaine per bill ((x) over bar = 2.86 mu g). Only one $1 bill was cocaine free. In one case ($1 bill), only traces (below quantitation limit) of cocaine were found. All four unci rculated $1 bills were cocaine-free.