Along with all those wadded-up ones and fives in your wallet, you’re probably carrying around a fair amount of drugs.
Recent research at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, found that up to 90 percent of bills currently in circulation carry trace amounts of cocaine. Yikes. Of course, very few of those bills are actually used to snort the drug. Cocaine in its powdered form is incredibly fine, and just one contaminated bill that finds its way into an ATM or bank counting machine can contaminate thousands more. Luckily, the amount of drugs on any given bill is so small that most people have no reason to fear that their wallets are getting them high.
In my grade-school civics class, we learned that it was a crime to shoot a bald eagle and that our nation’s flag should never touch the ground. So what’s the rule about snorting cocaine out of our national currency? People do a lot of weird things with money—exactly how much of it is legal?
Defining Defacement
Laws regarding our paper currency and coinage are written by the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing. According to Title 18, Section 333 of the U.S. Code, it’s illegal to deface any currency.
“Whoever mutilates, cuts, disfigures, perforates, unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, Federal Reserve Bank, or Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such item(s) unfit to be reissued, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.”
Translated from government-ese to plain English, that means it’s illegal to deface currency so badly that it’s unusable.
The Internet, of course, is rife with YouTube videos of aspiring magicians who set dollar bills on fire, and it’s easy to find instructions for using dollar bills to construct art projects or to decipher mystical Mason imagery. Plenty of bills also carry a stamp for Where’s George, a Web site where users can track where their cash has been over the course of its twenty-month life in circulation. Chances are also good that you’ve been in a bar or restaurant with autographed dollar bills taped up behind the cash register. The most important part of the law is the phrase, “unfit to be reissued.” Folding or doodling on bills is generally okay, because that doesn’t affect the bills’ usability. Even ripping a bill in half and taping it back together isn’t illegal. Lots of people stamp messages onto bills, ranging from advertising slogans to political messages, and they don’t result in a bill being taken out of circulation.
