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Terahertz Scanners See Inside Sealed Packages
opticsorg writes "Japanese scientists have demonstrated a system that detects the presence of illicit drugs that are concealed within an envelope. Tests to date have shown that the imaging system can successfully detect and identify a range of substances including ecstasy (MDMA) and methamphetamine. The researchers are now working with companies to develop a mail screening system that could suit use in post offices and airports."
Bad scientist, bad, bad scientist! Go cure cancer or something useful!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
As stupid as the war on drugs is, attempting to gain the upper hand through technology is even stupider.
For instance, thanks to the innumerable advances in creating genetically-engineered plants, we will soon see the day where the characteristics of interest in plants such as cannabis, coca, psilocybin, and opium are capable of being integrated within such ordinary plants as grass, seaweed, ferns, etc. So even if we are able to use technology to prevent drugs from coming into this country from the outside, the obvious solution for organized crime will be to make it so that the drugs can be more easily manufactured from within.
We've already seen this with methamphetimines. By working to reduce the supply and thereby increase the cost of the more traditional drugs, the market responds with a drug like meth, that is easy and cheap to produce domestically. Look at the consequences of the meth epidemic in America. It's a total disaster.
Changing the technology isn't the answer. Changing the policy is. Legalize drugs now.
Who would you rather see selling drugs? Law-abiding citizens in a legalized environment who won't sell to kids? Or criminals in a black-market environment who will?
That's the question nobody on the prohibition side seems to be able to answer. They admit that they will never be able to rid the world of illegal drugs, yet cannot come to grips with this simple question. If our drug policy is based on what is best for the children, then why haven't we legalized already? Why not start letting communities actually control these controlled substances for a change? When do we learn the lesson of alcohol prohibition? When do we recognize that there is no constitutional basis for the continuation of this goddamn policy?
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Someone figures out how to reflect these waves to give off false or misleading information... And since the intent seems to be to keep peoples rights intact, you cant just open the package. This will only last as a viable anti drug solution until three MIT stoners get bored.
I have a Cig, but do you have a light?
I wonder how this system would work on detecting a complex biological powder, such as Anthrax spores.
More of my tax dollars spent on projects designed to help my government go on 'fishing expiditions' to see whether or not I need to be jailed. I truly don't understand why the youth of this nation is so untrusting of government. After all, the true purpose of all governments is to vet society for undesirables, yes?
We already put more people in jail than any other country on Earth, proportionately; this apparently isn't enough for some people. When your government starts hunting for reasons to jail you, you know it's gone too far. I once read a very interesting thought on why something like this is done. The author expressed the idea that since governments cannot control totally law-abiding persons (as in moral laws), it must create enough sufficiently complex laws such that no person can possibly go through life without breaking one.
Ask a lawyer how many laws they've broken by lunchtime, if they wanted to get really technical, and I think you'll find the results extremely interesting.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Yes, of course, I should have made that clearer.
Alcohol is the only drug you can be addicted to that can kill you when you try to quit.
More people die from alcohol overdose than do from any other recreational drug, even though alcohol manufacturing is legal and regulated and thus produced without adulteration.
Alcohol is more intoxicating than heroin, cocaine or marijuana, and hence, causes more death indirectly through accidents and violence.
And then of course there are the long-term health consequences, which kill more people than any other drug out there save tobacco.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Marijuana Does Not Cause Reckless Driving
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2003 08:04:40 -0700
Subject: Marijuana Does Not Cause Reckless Driving
Pubdate: Fri, 26 Sep 2003
Source: DrugSense Weekly
Section: Feature Article
Website: http://www.drugsense.org/current.htm
Author: Mitch Earleywine, Ph.D.
Note: Mitch Earleywine, Ph.D., is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Southern California and author of "Understanding Marijuana" (Oxford University Press, 2002).
MARIJUANA DOES NOT CAUSE RECKLESS DRIVING
The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and certain Wisconsin legislators have launched a new crusade against "drugged driving," with a heavy emphasis on marijuana. This crusade is largely based on scientific misinformation, and it could lead to the enactment of bad laws.
ONDCP has several slick television commercials on the subject. One shows dramatic auto accidents and two crash test dummies passing a joint while a serious voice says, "In a recent study, one in three reckless drivers tested positive for marijuana." Note the careful phrasing. The idea is to make viewers think that marijuana caused the reckless driving, without really saying that it did.
Why would ONDCP be so coy? The answer lies in the actual data regarding marijuana's effects on driving,
I study the effects of drugs and teach classes in the science of illicit substances, so I know this field. The plain fact is that marijuana does not cause reckless driving. Large studies of accidents show that drivers who test positive for marijuana (and ONLY marijuana -- i.e., people who haven't also been drinking or taking other intoxicating drugs) cause fewer crashes than people who haven't had any drugs at all.
That's right, people "high" on marijuana cause fewer crashes than those who are completely sober. The findings seemed impossible to explain. It was a puzzle that made no sense.
A bright and talented researcher in the Netherlands named Robbe recently solved that puzzle. He got experienced marijuana users stoned and had them drive around the streets of Holland. But these guys were no dummies. They drove slower, increased the distance between their cars and the cars in front of them, and never tried to pass other cars. Folks who smoked a placebo (a non-intoxicating substance made to look and smell like marijuana) drove as they usually did. Alcohol, alone or in combination with marijuana, wrecked driving completely.
Robbe's results helped explain the accident studies. People who used marijuana and only marijuana were compensating for the drug's effects by driving more carefully. Nobody should drive high, but we can all take a lesson from these people who did: slow down, leave space between your car and the next, and don't try to pass. Unlike alcohol, which makes people behave recklessly, marijuana users tend to be aware that they are impaired and compensate with some success.
But what about the ONDCP's claim that one in three reckless drivers tested positive for marijuana?
It's not quite a lie, but it's deliberately misleading. The Drug Czar's no dummy. He wants to scare people, and he knows the complete facts won't do it. Instead he throws out scary but incomplete and misleading statistics - -- and hopes people won't question them. Yes, one in three reckless drivers tested positive for marijuana in a urine screen, but we don't know how many of them had alcohol, antihistamines, cocaine, or any number of other drugs in their systems.
Legislators need to ask for the complete facts behind the scare stories before they start passing new laws based on misinformation.
There are cheaper, easier ways to get impaired drivers off the road. Roadside sobriety tests are reliable, inexpensive, and valid indicators of impaired driving. Law-enforcement officers can learn to administer these tests quickly and easily. Unlike expensive blood tests, which can only identify a few drugs, roadside sobriety tests can detect any kind of drug im
Teraview, a UK spinoff of Toshiba, is developing terahertz imaging technology to diagnose cancer, among other medical applications.
If I remember my chem 101 correctly, the reason this tech works is because different types of chemical bonds are susceptible to different frequencies of radiation, depending on their strength, which depends on the type of bond, types of atoms involved and their surrounding atomic environment. You shoot a bunch of wavelengths at a molecule and some will be absorbed, and in varying ratios, producing a relatively unique signature. Congratulations, you've just reinvented spectrography.
From dyerlabs.com/chemistry:
Terahertz may be a good candidate from a privacy standpoint, but it's in between the not-so-useful microwave and okay-for-identifying-things infrared. So basically this is just a crippled, privacy-compliant form of IR spectrography, and they've discovered that the amphetamine-based molecules can be identified with it. This doesn't mean that other organics can be properly identified by it.
Frankly, this seems kind of lame.
just because one drug might be a candidate for legalization does not mean that all are
Actually, it's the other way around. Just because a few drugs are potentially harmful to society, why ban hundreds of totally unrelated substances?
Most people think "illicit drugs are bad", when in fact "illicit drugs" is just a list undemocraticly compiled by the govnerment from seemingly random rules.
Here are some "drugs" that you may or may not have heard about; psilocybine, dmt, ibogaine, mescaline, salvinorin, muscimol. Can you explain to me why these drugs should be illegal? Do you think the government can explain this?
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life