The DEA Is Worried Sick About Touching Contaminated Drug Money

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-dea-is-worried-sick-about-touching-contaminated-drug-money

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is so concerned that drug-laced cash seized in narcotics busts could seriously injure—even kill—its agents, it has begun reaching out to potential industry partners about decontaminating confiscated currency, The Daily Beast has learned.

“Some of the substances on the currency may be extremely harmful to human health and potentially result in death,” says a DEA solicitation posted late last week on a U.S. government procurement portal.

“It is expected that most of the substances on the contaminated currency will be controlled substances including, but not limited to, narcotics (fentanyl, fentanyl analogues, heroin), cannabinoids (marijuana, THC, JWH compounds), stimulants (amphetamines, cathinones), hallucinogens (LSD, PCP, NBOMes), depressants (benzodiazepines, barbiturates),” the solicitation continues. “Precursor chemicals used to make these substances and other unknown harmful chemicals may also be present on the currency.”

The nascent currency decontamination initiative has not been previously reported, and DEA is looking for a vendor who can service to all of its 222 domestic offices. The agency has put out an RFI, or Request For Information, from vendors with experience in decontamination; the next step would be an RFP, or Request For Proposals. Shenika Butler, the Department of Justice contracting officer overseeing the RFI, declined to comment. A DEA spokesman said he was unfamiliar with the plan.

If the program becomes operational it would be an apparent first in American policing, and the DEA seems to be spooked enough about the idea of toxic money that it “will not count the contaminated currency (due to inherent safety issues) prior to packaging the contaminated currency, but will have a general indication of the amount that has been packaged for the vendor,” last week’s solicitation reads.

However, longtime law enforcement veterans tell The Daily Beast that “poisonous” drug money is not a concept they’ve ever heard of before.

Special Agent Dennis Franks spent 22-plus years with the FBI, which included a stretch at the helm of a multi-agency drug trafficking task force.

It’s standard for agents to wear latex gloves when they handle drug money, but that’s always been about the extent of it, said Franks. And although it has long been common knowledge that a majority of U.S. currency bears trace levels of cocaine residue, the amounts are far too minute to elicit any sort of biological response. (An esoteric industrial process using heated, pressurized CO2 to clean soiled notes has been marketed to central banks in recent years as a way to remove built-up sebum and grime on the surface of bills, thus keep them looking fresher and circulating for longer.)

The idea of decontaminating drug money is also a brand-new notion to former NYPD Detective Sergeant Joseph Giacalone, now a professor at CUNY’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

He points to fentanyl as the primary catalyst for any extra safety precautions cops are taking nowadays.

“There’s some pretty scary stuff going on,” said Giacalone. “There was always some inherent risk to police work but in 2018, with these designer drugs, it’s become even worse.”

Fentanyl and its analogue carfentanil are 50-100 times more powerful than morphine. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, accidental exposure can be potentially life-threatening in certain instances, which include “inhalation, mucous membrane contact, ingestion, and percutaneous exposure (e.g., needlestick).”

Could someone routinely handling US currency – especially paper currency – absorb enough of these illegal substances from our “paper money” ?

Is it time for all chronic pain pts that have to undergo routine urine testing to determine if they are taking their medications and not taking any illegal substances or medications that they are not being prescribed ?

Is it time for all of those chronic pain pts to STOP USING CASH and move all their purchases over to debit/credit cards for as many of their purchases as they can?  You don’t know what is on the paper currency that you are using.. it could be illegal drugs or it could be CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html  

The next time you read where someone gets a positive urine test for something that should not be in their system and no one can explain why ?

 

 

Filed under: General Problems