The Dollar of Death

On a cold February morning, a dollar was born in a sterile room deep inside the U.S. Treasury. Stamped with the authority of Congress, it was part of a new batch authorized to fund the war on drugs—a decades-long campaign aimed at curbing the nation’s drug crisis. Fresh and crisp, the dollar passed through government hands, eventually landing in the budget of a federal agency tasked with fighting drug crime.

It didn’t take long for the dollar to be spent. It went to buy a piece of equipment, part of a larger effort to arm law enforcement agents for their battle against drug trafficking. The dollar flowed from account to account in its journey. One afternoon, it was spent on lunch at a pizza place, and it began its private life.

Soon, the dollar ended up in the wallet of a young man who had just lost his job. Feeling hopeless and helpless, he turned to the very thing the dollar had been created to stop—drugs. On a grim night, in a taxi, he handed that dollar – along with a few of its brothers and sisters – to another young man.  In return, he received a small bag of powder. The dollar had now crossed over to the other side of the war it was meant to fight.

The dealer, always on the move, stuffed the dollar into his pocket. It traveled through a labyrinth of hands and transactions, hopping between the shadows and the underbelly of the city. Before long, the dollar found itself bundled with others, sent south to a cartel that supplied the streets with narcotics. In the hands of the cartel’s money launderers, the dollar was cleaned, exchanged, and passed along like it had never been part of anything illicit.

Yet the dollar’s journey still wasn’t at an end. It was used to pay a mule, who smuggled a fresh batch of drugs back into the United States. The dollar flowed once again into the hands of a dealer, then a customer—another soul looking for an escape. This time, it was a young man who was already dancing on the edge. He handed over his crumpled bills, including the once-proud dollar that had started its life fighting this very war.

In exchange, the young man received his final dose. Hours later, he overdosed alone in his apartment, his body a casualty in a war that claimed lives on both sides. And somewhere, the dollar lay in the dealer’s pocket, still traveling, still passing from hand to hand, its original purpose long since wasted, but its story far from over.