 In the U.S., the state of Montana has taken action to ban cyanide in gold production.Cyanide, a highly toxic chemical, has been the most widely used reagent for extracting gold from ore for the past century.The Cyanide Code grew out of the first-of-its-kind workshop of multi-stakeholders held in Paris in May, 2000 convened to consider developing a code of best practice for the use of cyanide in gold mining in response to a tailings spill from the Aural Mine at Baia Mare in Romania in January 2000.