MADRID, Dec. 25 (UPI) -- A study says 94 percent of all euro bank notes currently in Spain have traces of cocaine on them because of their use in drug trafficking.
The BBC said Spain has one of the world's highest rates of cocaine use, and the report discovered that the contaminated bills, which dated no earlier than 2002, carried an average of 25.18 micrograms of the drug.
While many of the bills likely got the cocaine residue from direct contact when they were rolled up and used to snort the drug, experts attached to the study said many others could have been contaminated via counting machines, the BBC said.
The new cocaine study based in Spain, which has 475,000 regular cocaine users, comes after similar studies found similar conditions in nearby countries.
In 2003, a survey found that euro bank notes in Germany showed similar traces of the narcotic.
The BBC said that in 1999 experts in London found that 99 percent of all 5-pound notes had cocaine traces.
