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No more cocaine traces left on banknotes?
Wednesday 25th September 2013 | Katie
To prevent people using banknotes to sniff Cocaine, a politician has an idea for laminated notes to be produced - but is there really any point?
As a result of people often rolling banknotes up and using them to sniff this popular party drug, recent studies have found that while over 90% of the UK's banknotes have small traces of cocaine on them, 11% of the country's banknotes had large enough traces of cocaine on them that they were - at one point - used to snort the drug directly.
One politician thinks this is unacceptable, and argues that polymer (a type of plastic) banknotes would make a good replacement for paper, since they are extremely difficult to fold, let alone roll up.
Although the notes made out of such materials would not be able to sustain the types of particles used in cocaine, I can't help thinking that this may be a useless initiative and waste of time. People searching for cocaine are not going to be able to find enough of it on old banknotes to be able to actually take the drug, and if this initiative is to discourage people from snorting cocaine at all, it will not work, seeing as those people will just find other ways to take it if they don't have paper money.
