Introduction How does money become contaminated with cocaine - Essay Example

Introduction Cocaine contaminates money. Many cocaine users find it convenient to snort the drug from a rolled-up bill. This may mean a rise in the drug use. This can also be attributed to an increase in the number of bulk cash-handling machines and ATMs because their omnipresence increases the chances of spread of the powder from one contaminated bill to many more. “Both may contribute . [but] it seems clear that the banknotes containing 1,240 micrograms of cocaine were used directly during a drug deal or uptake [drug use]” (Zuo cited in Biello, 2009).

Owing to the fact that cocaine is snorted from rolled-up bills, money recovered on the drugs trade from police raids is often contaminated with cocaine heavily. Tainted bills put into the counting machines also contaminates money. Gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC/MS) is a technique in which a GC is coupled to a MS to separate, recognize, and quantify complex chemical mixtures. Vaporization of the sample solution takes place after it is injected into the inlet of GC. The sample solution sweeps by a carrier gas onto a chromatographic column.

Flowing of the sample through the column causes separation of the compounds consisting of the required mixture by virtue of their interaction with the carrier gas and the column’s coating. The column’s latter part passes from a heated line of transfer and finishes at the ion source entrance. This is where the compounds are changed into ions. A mass analyzer fulfills the purpose of separating the ions that are positively charged. After separating, the ions enter a detector which sends information to a computer for visual display.

References:Biello, D. (2009, Aug. 16). Cocaine Contaminates Majority of U.S. Currency. Scientific American. Retrieved from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cocaine-contaminates-majority-of-american-currency/.