Slashdot Mirror
Drug Testing Entire Cities at Once
Ellis D. Tripp writes "Researchers have developed a technique for determining what illicit drugs people might be consuming in a given area, by testing a sample from the local sewage treatment plant. As little as a teaspoonful of untreated wastewater can reveal drug use patterns in a given community. Obviously, any drugs found can't be tied to any specific user, but how much longer until the drug warriors want to deploy automatic sampling units farther upstream of the sewage treatment plant?" From the article: "one fairly affluent community scored low for illicit drugs except for cocaine. Cocaine and ecstasy tended to peak on weekends and drop on weekdays, she said, while methamphetamine and prescription drugs were steady throughout the week."
is probably a steady-state level of tequila. I'm hoping that makes the test register a null.
mmmmmm, tequila...
what if someone flushes a bag of drugs cuz they know the police are gonna search their house? That'd make it look like 1000 people overdosed at once lol
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
I wonder, if they start doing more and more extensive tests, could they eventually determine the household in which the drugs come from? What's preventing them from testing the sewer water directly out of a house, instead of a waste plant.
Will there be a need for sewer search warrants in the future? Hmm...
Results for Salt Lake City show very high levels of LDS
your water meter needs to be 'upgraded'?
They'll also be able to tell if your city is pregnant
This is easily defeated using old technology -- go behind a TREE!
Isn't the common advice to flush expired prescriptions?
This drug war foolishness is getting out of hand.
My standing policy for piss testing is they have to collect it orally if they want if from me. Hot from the pipe.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
...pee in your yard. Trees like the nutrients!
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
Meth heads don't do less drugs during the work week, I wonder if that has something to do with them not having jobs. I am surprised with heroin supposedly being so addictive that it's levels drop off during the week. Am I wrong in assuming that the weekday to weekend usage ratio should be closely tied to a drugs addictiveness?
thats right, I rarely use capitals. deal with it. but don't mistake my laziness for stupidity
Obviously, any drugs found can't be tied to any specific user, but how much longer until the drug warriors want to deploy automatic sampling units farther upstream?
Who gives a shit? Piss on teh dirt.
Next week: drug warriors take aim at the Sun.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
... the drug taking sewer habiting alligators, always trying to ruin our fun.
On another note, I wonder if its possible to get a high of this water, and I worry about what the sharks with lasers might do when the rivers flow into the sea.
Wouldn't it be swell if these city wide drug tests revealed how much Americans just love their drugs and the whole silly war on drugs was called off on account of it being a hideous ineffective activity that probably creates more problems than it solves. Then again given that it was created to "stop blacks and asians from raping the white women" (tongue firmly in cheek) and to control the hippies... (history channel drug week is fun)
I don't care what you say, all I need is my Wumpabet soup.
... if any of the, uh, extruded chemicals are bound to DNA, say from cells shed from the drug user's intestinal wall. Yeah, it's not practical (yet) to DNA-scan the entire populace, but I can foresee this being used to catch probation/parole violations (given that discontinuing drug use is often a condition of remaining loose on parole), where the perp's DNA is already on file.
Take it one step further: insurance companies who don't want druggie-risks in their system, who might start requiring DNA on file as a condition of being insured.
This has disturbing implications re privacy -- not now, but quite possibly a decade or two from now, especially given the direction the world is headed.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Back in the day we called them weekend warriors. They were the dumb kids with easy lives that didn't tend to act very responsibly. But then they'd just pop back into the suburbs.
Quack, quack.
I mean, sure, they couldn't tie steroids to any particular player, but .....
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
it sounds good to me! Bring in the DEA squads!
-your friendly neighborhood AG
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Is there anything we can do to put an end to this hopeless war? It's a war on us (including people like me who don't use drugs). Both major parties are like rabid dogs on this war, trying to outdo each other in how crazy they are for new police powers and new harsher penalties. What can we do to stop this?
... when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Find free books.
I've got to say this is a very interesting idea. I've never heard anything like this.
That said, I'd like to ask a question of /.ers. Many here are obviously against anything they see as an encroachment of their privacy. I agree with them to varying degrees. But in this case, where would you draw the line and why? Is there really a privacy concern at testing from the waste water from a whole city or region? But what if you are testing at the main sewer pipe that serves 20k people? How about 10k? What about a neighborhood of 500?
As much as the "well they are breaking the law/what do you have to hide" appeals to me, I wouldn't support testing individual houses (or probably anything under a large chunk, say 10k).
Why 10k? It is quite anonymous, yet would be small enough that it might provide some good relative data as to where certain drugs are more of a problem (especially in bigger cities, like 1 million+).
Now once your waste water leaves your house and enters the pipes, it's no longer your property, right? Once garbage is placed out on the street (or in the garbage truck) it is no longer your property and the police can search it without a warrant right? This is the same thing isn't it? If not, when would waste water cease to be "yours"; considering that it is quickly mixed (permanently) with other waste water and unrecoverable.
Just wondering how you guys would draw the line.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
A urinal with a charcoal filter! ...and the follow-up patent, "A urinal with a charcoal filter... on the internet."
Affluent effluent?
I have a couple of friends with a prescription for meth-amphetamines for their ADD, as they are basically immune to all the other drugs that have been tried on them. My girlfriend has a prescription for THC as it is the only mood elevator that can control her bipolar condition. I have overactive production of an enzyme CYP2D6, meaning my medicine cabinet would make a heroin addict drool.
We all have constant levels in our systems, stable jobs, and interact well in society. Just because someone needs to take these drugs do not mean that we cannot hold a job, or that we are scabs on society... And just because (aside from the THC, which is not addictive) our meds are addictive, does not mean our usage varies, because we take our daily dose as covered by our medical insurance.
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
In 1994 I had about 40 million drug test results on my 486-50 woo hoo! (I was writing a Microsoft Access program for the guy.)
;-)
:-)
Anyway, I did a GROUP BY sic code and drug, descending frequency. The highest was construction workers, pot and cocaine. The second highest was school employees, alcohol. This doesn't mean who does what -- this means who gets busted for what in the tests, very different. Everything else was non-clustered.
BTW, the guy had the hottest girls for reception and collecting specimens. I think he hired girls who didn't pass the tests to work for him. Fun girls
Pillheads
Well if they start testing the sewage the best way around it would be to utilize something other than a toilet for your bodily waste storage needs. Which means drug hovels will become an even more disgusting eyesore in communities, but at lest they'll be easier to spot/smell.
"If I were bound by all laws everywhere I'm sure I would have committed a capital crime somewhere."
I declare shenanigans, I don't want her shite throwing off the ratio.
Can I use your toilet , dude?
Whoooaa....
You already look like a moron when you're high, so just do your business in your pants. So you wont get caught.
"one fairly affluent community scored low for illicit drugs except for cocaine. Cocaine and ecstasy tended to peak on weekends and drop on weekdays, she said, while methamphetamine and prescription drugs were steady throughout the week."
Coming from someone who has met more than my fair share of meth users, there is no such thing as a recreational meth user. Coke, weed, ecstacy, even heroine can be used recreationally by some (and not by others).
But noone uses meth recreationally. It's an all or nothing drug.
They should test the outflow from the Whitehouse and Capitol...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Geez, why not harness all this science and do something useful, like figure out where the estrogen mimicking stuff in the water comes from, or tracing industrial poisons that really kill people. Maybe we can fingerprint motor oil so that when some yay-hoo changes his oil into the storm drains we can find him and make him swim in his own effluvia. Meanwhile, while I don't think it will happen, letting The Man read my piss to see if I am on THC or prozac or Gummi Bears or whatever is really not an appealing prospect.
There's always the neighbor's bushes...
... but why let the constitution get in the way of national security?
Ask me about repetitive DNA
For one thing, such testing runs into dangerous intellectual propery issues:
e cting_bodily_waste/r cing_the_excremental_ip/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/03/09/bofh_prot
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/03/16/bofh_enfo
...and hop in my septic tank. Tablets to drop in the bowl for defeating this fascist BS in 3..2..
Faith: n. -- That human impulse that drives them to steal appliances when the power goes out
Dang, Osama himself could hide in all that crap. Along with Jimmy Hoffa, Amelia Earhardt, and a few sauropods to boot.
As far as I'm aware, most US case law allows a warrantless search of an individual's trash, provided it's left in a public place or on the street. I see no reason why a similar notion wouldn't extend to whatever is flushed into the public sewer system.
likely you've never understood the lyrics of Primus's "Those Damned Blue-Collar Tweakers ...
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Not everyone uses the sewer...
That's some really good shit.
Is there anyone around here who can tell me what the "news value" of this story is ? Research like this, has been done ages ago, and if it was not, then it would be common sense. Pure logic. I just can't see the point !
a short list of things that WILL go wrong:
people with valid uses for these drugs - yes there's a LOT of them
unknowns being added to the system - what if someone flushes something down the toilet that fools the system? this has no way to confirm what your sampling actually passed through a person
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
"one fairly affluent community..."
Don't you mean "effluent"?
Beta only seems to work for Google. Such a shame.
Many here are obviously against anything they see as an encroachment of their privacy. I agree with them to varying degrees. But in this case, where would you draw the line and why?
I'd draw the line at any government study because it's a waste of money. Due to false positives, medical drug use and a lack of control population, I doubt this kind of study is worth more than the subject mater. The money is better spent on ordinary police work, where real crimes are investigated and people who are really a nuisance are locked up. If you can get a warrent, you can test my piss. If I'm intoxicated, you should lock me up before I hurt someone or myself. The best way to fight the negative consequences of drug abuse and addiction is to lock up the abusers when they misbehave. Everything else is a fishing expedition that's going to harass people who never bothered anyone at best and can be used to jail political opposition at worst. What? There won't be any enforcement over positive results? Then what are you wasting my money on?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Original Post Submitted By -> Ellis D. Tripp
This is just pure coincidence, right?
Z.
...at a Judas Priest show in Salt Lake City. Caused me to see legions of wide-bottomed, watery eyed blond folks in suits on ten speeds.
I'll never touch the stuff again.
No, not the legislation, the literal sewage. I'd love to see the the drug usage pattern changes after a power shift between parties. ...or for that matter when Ted Kennedy goes on vacation. If they could display the results in real time on the CSPAN feed, that would be perfect.
As long as drug use remains illegal, lamenting a particular detection/enforcement method is foolish.
That said, I doubt installing such automatic sampling units far enough upstream to identify individuals will ever be allowed — not without a judge-signed warrant, because it is, really, a search.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Damn skippy I want our side to win, the cost of them winning the war is all our freedom ... is it really worth it?
I'm sure they must have said "...one fairly effluent community..."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I've submitted a few other stories in the past dealing with the War on (some) Drugs, and they never seem to make it.
/., there always seemed to be a big blind spot as far as the drug war is concerned.
For a site populated by as many privacy advocates and libertarian types as
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
This topic is so ripe for jokes and brilliant science. I am fascinated by the potential to verify my generalizations about cities. Riverside, California has a reputation for being a haven for meth labs. This would be a great way to verify that. The wastewater near my college is probably so tainted that you could get high off of it.
Would be more interesting to get the distributions of anti-depressants. Those are the ones that really amaze me. Man, we must a been so depressed before (pick your favorite SSRI) came along that the whole would woulda been black white and grey.
That is a pseudonym; his real name is I. P. Freely
... and you will have avoided one of life's many traps ...
It was done in Italy more than 2 years ago to gauge the number of actual users against survey data.
p
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/28659.ph
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
I have rights and I'm terrified for their wellbeing in this drug-paranoia-save-the-children-stricken culture. Drug demagoguery is at epidemic proportions and is ubiquitous in all parts of society. Drug demagogues are even targeting school areas.
I'm all for soccer-mom ecstasy experiences and education and anything else we can do to remove this blight on our society. I hope this gets deployed everywhere as soon as possible and as early enough to help individuals overcome their hair-on-fire panicked ignorance.
all New Yorkers will get their scheduled 10 hour stay at Riker's Island in the mail tomorrow.
don't laugh, Pittsburgh, you're next.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
This is, of course, the next logical step. We've been able to track corn consumption of towns for many, many years.
This is by no means new. The purpose of these tests is to track usage patterns. Such patterns are useful for understanding how and when drug usage trends spread from city to city, in addition to usage patterns over the course of a week or month. It is totally inconceivable that these tests could be used to identify drug users. Even if it were technologically possible, the cost would be prohibitive. If you could arrest every current drug user for possession, we would have many, many million more criminals than our jails could hold, not to mention the fact that jailing drug users is an excessively harmful way to deal with what is really a health problem.
The research lead, Jennifer Fields, has studied a number of waste water polutants, so scanning for narcotics is just another piece of the puzzle for waste water treatment. Gone (in the US) are the days when you could just disinfect public water with chlorine at the input and shoot it straight into a river at the output.
Now, water planners have to consider a much wider range of crap, from all the acetaminophen, birth control hormones, caffeine, and - yes - dope we're pissing away, as well as the usual collection of bacteria, viruses, organic matter, pez dispensers, and whatnot. It's not only that you don't want that stuff in the water supply, you don't want it collecting in the fish from the lake, Bambi's mom in the woods, or that water you merely boiled when out camping.
So, an increasing number water districts have to collect this information anyway. All that Fields did was analyze a portion of the data more intently. If your jurisdiction plans to stick a sensor into your waste stream at a point immediately before it commingles with that from your neighbors, you'll know about it 'way ahead of time, because it would be a Major project. Frankly, most water districts are so busy trying to keep everything flowing in the right direction, they couldn't be less interested in wasting time checking on your THC-related metabolic byproducts.
Luke, help me take this mask off
So obviously a troll.
with that attitude...
Your son has a great head start on being a drug user when he grows up.
20 years from now... look back and realize what you pushed him into in the name of "protecting" him.
Most of the fucked up always stoned always have drugs people i've met... Came from familys just like yours. extreme anti-drug.
So thanks. For raising my future dealer. Be sure to tell him how much you hate pot too. Often and loudly. Insert lots of the bs anti-drug propaganda into your speeches. That will speed things up.
http://www.cocaine.org/cocainenews/cocaine-rivers. html
I always pee in the bushes when tripping balls...
I've been shitting in my trusty ol' tin foil hat for years.
Now wash your hands.
Well I have 1 year old son and have to tell you that you are just as much an asshat as him.
Seriously, how did you make it to reproduction age with all those terrible drugs around?
Why do you feel the need to have your ideas on drugs implemented upon everyone else?
You hate our freedom right?
how is the truth flamebait? the US incarcerates its problems.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Probably not. It's just that this parent (like most) is monumentally insecure about his/her parenting skills. I feel sorry for the kid, who is probably a monumentally overprotected only-child.
I'm glad my parents were potheads in the 60's and could speak to me about drug use with a modicum of intelligence.
You're probably correct on this, though I wouldn't be surprised to see someone argue it in court.
Here's a workable Slashdot analogy for this: Just as one shouldn't link an IP address to a person (as the RIAA has tried to do), one shouldn't necessarily link what comes out of a household's sewage pipe to the person that lives there, either.
My point being, just as someone can leech off an unsecured Wi-Fi in a home, someone from outside the household (i.e. visiting friend, relative) could conceivably use the bathroom.
Then again, deployment of this type of surveilance would be kept plenty busy hunting down gross point sources like drug labs that they'd likely not bother to deal with individual drug use.
Actually no I don't because I don't want your genes continuing. These drugs you fear - what do you know of them, except that you fear them?
These people you hate - what do you know of them, except that you hate them?
These politicians you vote for - what do they do when they're not feeding your fear and hate?
Why does this country, "home of the free and the brave," lock away 6x more of its population per capita than Europe? What are we afraid of that we voluntarily throw away our bravery, conscience, constitution, respect for liberty, our fellow citizens and ourselves? How did we come to see these things as pitiable garbage?
What do we achieve when we turn a promising young man caught with marijuana into a criminal, destroying his ability to enter corporate America?
Is drug prohibition any more effective or less damaging to society than prohibition?
Do benighted true believers like you stomp all over the most well intentioned, innocent of people for asking the big questions? Are you, in all your zeal and good intention, incredibly damaging to everything you claim to love and cherish?
I feel badly for you, the country and the people that you help to destroy. I pray that you may somehow manage to escape from your ignorance, however unlikely it is that you will. I pray for us all. Please, Lord, show us all empathy and teach us all to love and do your work. May we learn to love our neighbors as we love our families.
Indeed.
Why did you post a a coward? You are just the kind of person I'd like to add to my friends list.
reduce money going into the black market. Thereby taking power away from the criminal organisations.
See my art -> http://herbevore.deviantart.com
Another moron who doesn't understand the Constitution.
Once the trash (and I would argue that includes your sewage) leaves your house it is no longer your property but that of the trash company. Therefore, if the trash company (or in this case the sewage plant) OKs its use by law enforcement there is nothing you can do.
Now with sewage, your argument would be that the town ordnance requires you to use the sewage as opposed to an outhouse, but the countering argument is "so, move out of the town".
The 4th Amend is simple.
If it public, it isn't covered.
If you don't own it, it isn't covered for you
If it isn't the government, it isn't covered.
Really the rules are simple and in a plainly written document.
i grew up in an area with pretty decent drug usage, never did them. the reason being, my parents taught me about drugs and their effects. by taught i dont mean 'be afraid of drugs!' or any of that dare crap. it was explained to me how they worked and why they didnt want me taking them. we also read some historical data about events that had high drug usage.
point is, dont count on the government to protect your kids for you, do it yourself.
read the parent subject as "Easily defecated?"
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
so do you think when they realise just how many people do do drugs but can still function, do you think the draconian drug laws will go ? or even more of peoples freedoms over there own dam bodies ! ?
OK, since this can also detect prescription drugs ... does this mean that the sewage company will have to abide by HIPAA regs in the states if they allow testing of this sort?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The research was done at Oregon State University and the University of Washington? What, is the Pacific Northwest finally getting tired of all the damn hippies or something?
They could probably install the drug sensors at the same time they do the TISP wiring.
http://www.google.com/tisp/press.html
Cities are nice places to visit, bad places to live.
The government did not take over the growing, processing and selling of the tobacco either.
Did'nt we have this on here about a year ago? I think it was DC or something. Stop being paranoid. Karl Rove quit or did'nt you hear about it.
I'm here for the experience, not the Hyperbole.
You've bought into the Pusher Bogyman theory. Dealers come in many forms, PUSHERS is a completely made up term. Dealers don't pull strings to get people hooked, ask any pothead. They don't lurk around schools, or offer free drugs to 4th graders. 99% are just people trying to get by and using drug sales as their job. You never see a acidhead with a gun, unless he's planning to blow his own brains out. Same for Ecstasy and Pot Dealers. Crack dealers see it as their way out of poverty, they will do anything to get out even kill. Generally Violent Crime does not spill out into the regular people unless there are crossfires.
People have been robbing and burgling long before drugs and they will be at it long after this phony war is over. Saying that drug addicts are behind it is foolish. The dangerous criminal element are generally not drug addicts, and they are by far more dangerous to other drug dealers then to regular folk.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This might get more people in the city to compost their waste. hurray!
> Regarding Rat Park -- the Wikipedia article you linked to says it was rejected by the
> top 2 science journals in the country.
I take it you are not into science. Trying to publish in Science or Nature is hybris, and doesn't say the paper is not good science. Just that it is not the top 0.01% science. That is, for every paper accepted in Science or Nature, 10000 papers go to "lesser" journals.
I know those bastards are up to no good!
I remember hearing about something like this being done in an Italian city, with surprising results, months (or even years) ago. These researchers just seem to have copied that idea.
That said, it's probably cheaper and easier to just get a majority hooked on store cards and track what they're buying at checkout. I think that's probably a little farfetched, for exactly the reasons you allude to -- there are easier ways to track spending habits, and they're only going to become more plentiful.
However, I think you could do some interesting analysis of people's diets in various areas via sewage. E.g., you could figure out if people from particular areas or demographic areas eat less-healthy foods, even though they might have a significant interest in lying about it when asked outright. Again, possibly easier ways, but I'm sure some researcher will try if they can get good granularity. It'd be interesting to look at 'lifestyle disease' patterns in different populations and then correlate it to diet, via sewage from different areas in a city.
Or, more usefully, if you did have a sewer-contents-monitoring system with fine resolution, that would be a good way to scan for diseases. Particularly ones like food poisoning or e. coli, that produce severe digestive
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
They also prefer to analyse sewage for drugs instead of illegally dumped chemical waste...
Nah, been done in Norway before.
5% or something of the capital is sniffing heroin if I remember correctly
This is blinging
Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves.
Don't drugs like Adderall trip amphetamine use? And since people are prescribed that on a daily basis, wouldn't that account for the daily use of meth?
-Critter Hart
This was done in Italy in 2005 with the Po river and analyzing the sewage water of several cities.
According to the oldest article I've found it was done by an american and an italian university.
this is the original paper (in english)
http://www.ehjournal.net/content/4/1/14
ciao
The more your culture spends time and money on stupid shit like this the more drugs you people need to consume to live in it.
Yes, it is foolish. If the police have a probable cause to believe, something illegal is taking place in that bedroom — be that fellatio, or incest, or rape — they have a duty to break in and stop it.
What you wanted to say, I guess, is that fellatio should not be illegal. Yes, no disagreement here — that any form of sex between consenting adults is illegal anywhere, is highly lamentable. But off-topic...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Knowing where drugs are being used, while it certainly can tell police something, can also tell public health officials something - like where to focus public service announcements about treatment centers, where to put treatment centers, and what kind of those places need to specialize in. Also, combining this fairly unbiased information with other demographics about the region - age, income, family size etc. (basically anything you can get from the census data), may also help with targeted marketing of treatment. Thus money spent becomes highly more effective.
They don't need a warrant any more. Just claim terrorist (sale of drugs funds terrorist and in the words of GWB: if you feed a terrorist or aid a terrorist, you're a terrorist, so that's a done deal) and you get the ability to invade wherever you want.
In Italy we use this monitoring method since at least 2005.
t m
See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4746787.s
In some places, you are not allowed to dispose your home-produced trash anywhere else than in your house trash can. This is so to prevent you to pass trought the monthly trash producing limits imposed by cities that I now in Germany.
flyneye:So what's up with that?
D.E.A. agent:Well,your specimen was fine,but your stool sample tasted horrible.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
One factor in how much money the ONDCP / DEA receives to fight the war on drugs is what percentage of the population is using drugs.
People lie when taking anonymous polls, and most drug users aren't caught. This makes it tough to know the true number.
This will allow the ONDCP to get more money to do the same ineffective job they have always been doing.
Forget what people choose to do to themselves... I'm more concerned about all this crap ending up in our lakes, rivers and oceans. I think we need to beef up our water treatment processes.
And come on, do we really want to put Jaws on speed?
Despite the obvious banter that will certainly arise considering the subject. One must actually take interest in what this actually says. Cocaine and ecstasy during the weekends, and prescription drugs plus meth during the week. Anyone notice a pattern perhaps? I mean, let's take the drug use this and responsibility that aside. Anyone here actually done three people's jobs on meth? Let's say fixing PCs, doing data recovery, handling sales, running the books, and anything else that comes along after everyone else got fired because the boss could make more money? Done any prescription drugs to make up for similar job stresses? Blown it off during the weekend on other more short term drugs? I'm not necessarily trying to draw a connection between certain affluent work environments and certain behaviors or anything, but I would suspect that some people have found themselves in similar situations. However yes, there are the golden children who have perfect lives and can preach perfection. However, does the rest of the population actually represent this sample? And could this sample survive without these others supporting them, or would they simply wither away as weak underdeveloped gene samples?
is a GREAT example of what a comprehensive, reliable source of drug information looks like.
Unfortunately, it (and other sites like it) are regularly condemned by prohibitionist politicians and their mouthpieces in the mainstream media because providing information other than "Just Say NO!" is deemed to be "pro-drug", and we all need to think of the children....
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
i believe the czar of russia attempted to prohibit the evil weed...people would puff 'til they passed out;-}
Dealers don't pull strings to get people hooked, ask any pothead.
You're right, here in Memphis they don't pull strings, they pull GUNS to get people hooked. Just head to Whitehaven, Orange Mound, Southaven, Voodoo Village, etc. People have been forced to buy and use crack at gunpoint, including myself.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I suspect it would come down to the "expectation of privacy" standard, and most people don't expect their wastewater can be seen by anyone before it is processed.
Not true. A city worker performing inspection/maintenance on a street's main line may see your wastewater.
Back in the 90s there was some research to analyze the chemical content of air being vented from a home into the atmosphere. The goal was to more easily locate people cooking meth in remote locations. A laser was shined into a heat plume to obtain a chemical profile. The theory was that no warrant was necessary. The officer operated the equipment from public property and the heat plume entering the atmosphere was also in a public space. The precendent was supposedly dogs sniffing vehicles passing through a checkpoint, odors leaving a vehicle were entering a public space and fair game. If a dog alerted that was valid probably cause for a search.
http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/29393.html
"drug war...single most devastating...social policy since slavery"
i recall (but can't find) an article about how the revenue from the income tax enabled prohibition to be passed...it hadn't made any progress in congress (hehe: pro- opposite of con-) while tax revenue was dependent on alcohol...and it wasn't repealed until the depression cut income tax revenue sufficiently that they had to...
are based on water bills: what goes in "must" go out...of course, watering your lawn doesn't add to the sewage load, but when has logic ever had any bearing on gummint policy?
likewise, codes require that a/c condensate must be pumped outside, rather than simply drained, lest the sewage system be overloaded, oh my:-(
There are easily detectable levels of female steroids (excreted excess birth control) and psychoactive drugs like Prozac SSRIs and ADD amphetatmines. Its is thoguh these might be affecting aquatic animals, especially amphibians- shades of Simpson's frogs.
In the same NY Times sections there was story about forensic botanists looking at the microchemical signatures in marijuana to figure out where it was grown. Might say something about how much is "native" or "imported", etc.
But that probably has nothing to do with sewage privacy and everything to do with not having the President of the United States stuck with his pants down for 15 minutes in a bathroom using foreign-sourced toilet paper. Secret Service probably doesn't want the President in a confined bathroom for an extended period of time and given the choice between inspecting all the toilet paper and bringing their own, they might as well bring their own.
paintball
I found out when my kids were in high school that you could buy pot in school. You could NOT buy alcohol in school.
If you're for prohibiting adult access to drugs, you're FOR granting access to drugs for minors. Drug prohibition isn't any more effective than alcohol prohibition was.
-mcgrew (on-topic link)
What are you talking about? why is it you incorrectly assume I don't care about freedom when all I care about is my kids wellbeing? What about _my_ freedom and _my kids_ freedom to live in a drug-free environment?
>> What do we achieve when we turn a promising young man caught with marijuana into a criminal,
He already turned himself into a criminal.
So why is it that Americans avoid taking responsibility for their own actions and instead want to blame everyone else? Your whole rant is a perfect example.
It's not much, but it's a start.
If you google this... river po, Italy drug testing - You'll see exactly how it's done. I read a great story about it almost a year ago, and can't find the original any longer. Just goes to show, a year ago that story probably wouldn't make /. but times they are a changin....
Sig Hansen?
Evidently someone is taking me seriously, about ten years late. See the heading "A Modest Joke" about halfway through this piece.
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
[But wouldn't this threaten the entire (legal and illegal) drug industry? It might be reasonable to ask who would off you first: a cocaine dealer or a Big Pharma hitman.]
People wreck their own lives, and sometimes drugs are involved. If people were educated as to the dangers, most will make rational choices. The idea that everyone who uses drugs or alcohol invariably spirals out of control is a myth. Most people never move beyond the casual use phase, and even people who move on to daily use rarely let it get out of control. And finally, most people who get into a destructive use pattern get themselves out of it. The people who spiral all the way down would have found some other way to do it even without the drugs.
That being said, there are some drugs that are more dangerous than others, and if you do them, you should watch yourself for signs things are getting out of hand. Opiates and speed are the worst in that regard. Cocaine and crack are only a little better. Hippies and ravers take note: ecstasy is just another amphetamine, it's almost as dangerous as speed. Alcohol is pretty bad, maybe one notch down from coke. Pot is just going to make it easier to goof off and waste time, that's about all it's ever going to do to you.
If you control your mindset and the setting you do them in, hallucinogens are harmless for most people. But if you have a weak and troubled mind, better stay away.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
If marijuana were ingrained in our society like alcohol, a far more harmful substance, it too wouldn't remain illegal. Do you think alcohol should be illegal? If so, I wont bother trying to reason with you.
Anyone else notice the connection?
There is also the problem of all the kids out there that are on prescrption meds for ADHD\ADD. These register as Meth in durg screens, in fact aderal the most used is meth. look up the generic name for this drug. So this is probabaly why they are seeing a all week use of Meth.
As with all "victimless crimes", it should be a matter of public record which "recreational" drugs each person is taking. If nobody cares that you're doing it, then it really is a victimless crime. However, I think most people would be inclined to revoke your driving priviledges if you have a habit which impairs your ability to drive safely.
I wonder what one would find if you tested the effluent from cruise ships? I know they're (theoretically) barred from dumping within X miles of shore and Y miles of sensitive benthic habitats (such as coral reefs and seagrass beds), and it's known that there's a fairly significant amount of prescription drucgs (birth control, etc) being released into the ocean by these ships. But it would be interesting to see which cruise line parties the hardest, for instance. (I have never been on a cruise, let alone tried to bring drugs aboard...)
http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/2783.html
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Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz
Usually, though, if I'm drinking tequila it's in a margarita, and the subtleties of good tequila get lost in that, and if anything the flavors of an anejo don't work well so an el cheapo tequila can do better - the quality of the mixers matters a lot more. I tend to prefer cheap gold tequila; my wife tends to prefer cheap clear tequila.
A few years back we were down in Mazatlan, and went to a restaurant called Tony's where one of our friends is a regular. Most of the people ordered the fish ("What kind of fish is it today?" "It's Tony's Fish!") Tony kept pouring tequila for us - it was unlabeled, but of course it was "Tony's Tequila". I later looked in one of the local liquor stores, and I'm guessing that it was probably about $5/gallon
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
If marijuana were ingrained in our society like alcohol, a far more harmful substance, it too wouldn't remain illegal. Do you think alcohol should be illegal? If so, I wont bother trying to reason with you.
Personally, I'd have more respect for the grandparent poster if they wanted alcohol to be prohibited as well, because then at least their position on recreational drugs would be internally consistent. (I am making the presumption that alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana - but that is true according to any sensible criteria. Only one of the two substances is toxic and addictive, only one causes many thousands of deaths every year.)
>north
You're an immobile computer, remember?
You do not have a RIGHT to live in a drug-free environment.
Your right to throw your fist ends at my face.
Your right to regulate drugs, ends at my body.
If you don't like drugs, don't take them.
If you don't want any drugs around you, buy a big huge parcel of land, put up some no-trespassing signs, sit in the middle, and never leave it. But what I do with my body, on my property, on my time, is my business.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
So, if we extrapolate according to "Holy Fire" the next steps will be:
1) Monitoring individual households
2) Regulating prices/availability of goverment medical care, depending on drug habits (ie how well you take care of your body).
"We're very sorry, but we can't treat your husbands heart-condition, as the latest report clearly shows that he has been ingesting caffeine against goverment recommendations."
Dude, the moment people start forcing you and your kid to take drugs, you'll be right. But if by "freedom to live in a drug-free environment" you mean freedom to live somewhere where everybody else is prohibited from taking drugs, that's not how freedom works. I don't have the freedom to live an environment where everyone is prohibited from drinking coffee, do I?
If you start claiming that there are so many drugs at schools that your kid WILL be forced to take drugs, then you're ignorant of reality. I don't know what the stats are, but I can guarantee you that drug use in schools is not 100%. I don't have a source for you, but I never took illegal drugs, and I went to school, so at most it's 99.999...8% and I'm willing to bet it's not that high either. Hell, I went through school and college and I don't even know WHERE I would go to buy pot. If I had an interest in the stuff, I'm sure I could find out where to get it, but it'd take some digging. And if your kid develops an interest in trying the stuff, you can't blame availability.
So why is it that Americans avoid taking responsibility for their own actions and instead want to blame everyone else?Smoking is bad for me, cigarettes are addictive, they are available, I know where to buy them, and yet I don't. That's taking responsibility for my actions, I don't need the government to be responsible for my possible lung cancer. I don't need the government to be responsible for my getting addicted to some drug and it interfering with my life. I don't need the government to be responsible for my overdosing. If any of that happens, it's my fault, and it'll be my responsibility to deal with it. Teach your kid THAT and he'll be responsible with his drug use, legal or otherwise.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
, as well as being responsible for the militarization of local police departments since the 1980s. And the enabling technologies and legislation (and their abuse potential) would seem to be very much on-topic in a forum like slashdot.
From sewage sniffing to thermal imaging, from utilities logging "unusual" domestic power consumption to genetically engineered viruses targeting drug crops, from internet censorship proposals to amateur scientists being unable to buy chemicals and glassware for their experiments, the drug war effects EVERYONE who gives a damn about freedom, including those who have never used an illegal substance in their lives.
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Here's a novel thought: How 'bout you just not do drugs?
http://www.beanleafpress.com
More like: "it's a strange country in which we live".
I think this is a very interesting way to not just drug test entire communities but to gauge the health of the a community. This I think will have little impact on drug enforcement. It will better help researchers, scientist, doctors, and activists better focus their needs. The DEA, Police, FBI, etc., pretty much know their drug trends to the point they know where to go to get the biggest busts. Setting up road blocks before and as people are going to clubs/parties on the weekends and right after those parties is already an effective tactic in catching trafficers (even if it is for their own enjoyment). Cops probably aren't surprised that affluent communities have a high concentration things like cocaine. But they aren't going to pull over more residents of those neighborhoods because of it. They'll catch hell. I think it is nice that they can do this. Think about it, it could have been part of your urine in that teaspoon!
thats...charming mmm wouldn't want to be sniffing for those drugs.