All around my brain...

I recovered my glasses and vision from the office, so once again I am able to discern the shapes and colours around me.

One of the first things I noticed was a newspaper article that you may have missed that claimed that a recent study had revealed that 90% of United States Dollar Bills show traces of cocaine.

Putting aside my linguistic inaccuracy – Mexico is also The United States (of Mexico) – and hoping that Mexicans everywhere will accept this as an apology, the article suggests that a lot of Americans are snorting the stuff.

Then again it could be that a FEW (North) Americans are snorting the stuff and using MOST of the currency in the process.

Statistics can be misleading, did somebody test 10 bills, find nine to be contaminated and then extrapolate?

And did the 10 bills come from their own pocket?

I thought I had better read more.

It seems that the researches, The American Chemical Society, recognise that one bill with cocaine residue can contaminate another but at the same time compared with a two-year-earlier study the rate of contamination had risen from 67%.

They then went on to compare the results with other countries including Canada, Brazil, Japan and China.

The newspaper article doesn’t say why they didn’t study Bolivian bank notes.

Of course they don’t tell us anything interesting like – where did they get all the notes to study? If they all came from (North) American banks it may be that the residents of the U.S.A. are the ones using the yen.

Maybe cocaine smells (?) better through foreign currency?

A long time ago, before I was corrected by Mexicans about the meaning of ‘The United States”, I read a book called – Funny Way to be a Hero; written by John Fisher, it is an account of the careers of British radio and theatre comedians.

One of the things that struck me in this book was the high percentage of British comedians from that era had problems with Alcohol – it seemed to be the addiction of choice in that milieu.

Unlike Cocaine which seems to figure more as a problem for sports (men?).

And Heroin that seemed to have hit Jazz musicians.

Why do drugs appear to be career selective?

And does cocaine make you irrationally angry?

(nb. I have just re-read this post several months later and i don't know why i added this link at the end. I can see no reason why this cocaine story should lead to th epost that it does. It's a mystery.)