tomatolord
Chief Petty Officer
- Joined
- Oct 1, 2004
- Messages
- 548
Who knew??<br /><br /> http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,145014,00.html <br /><br />Spray It, Don't Snort It<br />Thursday, January 20, 2005<br /><br />It's said that WD-40 (search) has 2,000 uses. Here's another one: anti-drug weapon.<br /><br />Bar owners in southwestern England have discovered that powdered cocaine chemically breaks down in the presence of the common lubricant, the BBC reports.<br /><br />"It congeals into a mess, it then semi-dissolves it and prevents it being sniffed," said Avon and Somerset (search) police officer Graham Pease.<br /><br />Pub workers across the region have begun to spray the oily stuff onto all flat surfaces in bathrooms countertops, paper-towel dispensers ... and toilet seats. Yes, toilet seats.<br /><br />For drug abusers, that's something to snort about.<br /><br />"Normally people don't notice it's there until too late, so it ruins their little supply of cocaine," said Monica Walker, an employee at the upscale Bar Excellence in Bristol, southwestern England's largest city and a big university town.<br /><br />Cocaine was relatively rare in Britain until about 10 or 15 years ago, but has since become entrenched as part of weekend night-clubbing culture in the new, young, hip "Cool Britannia."<br /><br />"It's a much-accepted drug by our customers, but it's obviously illegal," said Walker.<br /><br />Julian Bavaud, deputy manager of Bar Excellence, said the sprayed surfaces did have a slight greasy feel, but customers wouldn't be able to tell whether something had been treated with WD-40 or not.<br /><br />"We dont spray it every night, but perhaps once or twice a week," he told the Press Association, a British wire service.<br /><br />WD-40 stands for "water displacement, 40th attempt," which is how the chemist who developed it referred to the substance, according to the WD-40 company's Web site.<br /><br />A company spokeswoman, contacted by the Press Association about the lubricant's anti-drug use, said WD-40 wasn't meant to be ingested into the human body, whether deliberately or not.<br /><br />"As far as we are concerned," she said, "it is not a use we would encourage."
