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."
your water meter needs to be 'upgraded'?
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.
What's preventing them from testing the sewer water directly out of a house, instead of a waste plant.
If you live in the US, the 4th amendment.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
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?
... but why let the constitution get in the way of national security?
Ask me about repetitive DNA
As much as the "well they are breaking the law/what do you have to hide" appeals to me, [...]
It shoudn't. That's the sort of attitude tyrants depend on.
Just wondering how you guys would draw the line.
Well before the prosecution of victimless crimes like drug use. Alas, the legal system in most countries is far beyond where I would draw the line.
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.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
If they took the huge amounts of money they spend on enforcement and used it to help people who were drawn to hard drugs in the first place...oh yah, we hate fixing things by helping people in the US. Ok, get back to jailing them.
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.
Economics is in the eyes of the beholder, at least in the War on Drugs. The economical way to deal with the problem would be to buy the coca and opium crops from their home countries, sell the pure finished products in government stores, and tax the hell out of it, making it still 1/100th the price of the illegal version for guaranteed quality. Instead, we pump billions into the prison-industrial complex, and poor people subsidize bribes to law enforcement, and people pay the price of overdoses and adulterated product. The expenditures to collect and test sewer water directly downstream of specific houses will be a nice windfall for public works unions, law enforcement, the legal profession, the test lab industry, and manufacturers of chemical analysis equipment. And of course, if it saves just one child from starting a meth habit, it's worth it, 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?"
Exactly so.
I'm reminded that there have been murderers caught by similar methodology: I recall hearing of one some years ago, tracked by identifiable DNA from blood traces in the sewage main (well away from the perp's house), after the perp had flushed the drippy bits down the sink.
Now that I'm thinking about it, I also recall reading about how mass-spec has gotten reliable enough that feeding your victim to the chickens will no longer save you from a murder rap, because human DNA can be distinguished from the rest of the chicken shit.
That goes to refute what an AC said in another reply: "Any tests like that would be considered contaminated the second it entered the sewer, if not the toilet. Any chemicals found on/near your DNA could easily be attributed to the chemical entering the waste during the long voyage to the sewer treatment plant."
It's rather a lot like how massive databases documenting everyone's behaviour presently seem ridiculous and overkill, but consider that today vast amounts of data are recorded and mined that were not recorded at all as little as 5-10 years ago...
And while it presently seems like overkill to bother chasing mere drug offenders through the sewage, our growing culture of thought crime makes the eventual prospect seem not entirely outlandish, even if one's tinfoil hat is properly fitted.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
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.
If (hard) drugs were legal, it would be very hard to prove murder by overdose, etc. You could kill pretty much anyone you want: just lace something with a drug and say "Oh, he liked LSD on his cereal in the morning. It was a horrible accident." (I don't really know how lethal LSD is, but you get the idea).
How would the situation be any different to drugs that are currently legal, but lethal in sufficient quanities ?
Like, oh, I don't know, alcohol ? Or sleeping pills ?
There are _lethal_ drugs today that are in common use (albeit often requiring a prescription). Further, there are recreational drugs that are legal today but are more dangerous than many illegal drugs.
So if the users wish to keep themselves quietly locked away at their own expense, then they should live with the consequences of the choices they make as adults, after all, it really is only a problem for the rest of society because of the high cost of those drugs and the dangerous criminal element associated with distributing those substances, who, in fact have a significant financial interest in making sure those substances remain illegal.
Whilst I am content to pay taxes for the medical treatment of a drug addicts, or to assist in rehabilitation services for them, having to pay the enormous cost of enforcing the illegality of those substances, or imprisoning the addicts, or the crimes that result because of the high cost of those substances and their addictive nature. As far as I am concerned those idiot wowsers are far more of a problem for me than the drug addicts, as the drug addicts are problem, which rather bluntly, eventually solves itself.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
You remind me of the last person I knew who explained to me, in great technical detail, as to why various drugs were not as addictive or dangerous as the government claimed. MIT graduate. Amateur chemist. Genius. Dead of a drug overdose.
Regarding Rat Park -- the Wikipedia article you linked to says it was rejected by the top 2 science journals in the country.
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.
kill the killers
castrate the rapists and molesters
jail the kidnappers
enslave the dealers
rehab the addicts
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sure people will still steal, but the size of the problem is hugely reduced as they need to steal a whole lot less and as a significant benefit, those law enforcement resources which are currently wasted on the drug problem can be allocated to the burglary and mugging problem which currently is virtually ignored.
The dangerous and violent criminal element is stripped of it's resources, and becomes a far more manageable problem and can be more effectively targeted with the now freed up law enforcement resources.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
On this planet, however, "good enough" is good enough for any alcohol drinker (or a drug user.) Getting an affordable drug when one needs it surely beats robbing a store and potentially getting killed. Drug users may be reckless but still not suicidal. Some addicts would be glad to stop, but their bodies changed to require the drug, and if forced to abstain they feel extreme pain. Under the threat of such pain an addict will rob and kill; however given an option I believe many would accept the government-sponsored drug, the pain will be gone just as well as when using a street drug.
"it really is only a problem for the rest of society because of the high cost of those drugs and the dangerous criminal element associated with distributing those substances"
I'd say there is another problem, which people don't appreciate. It's that if you sell these things at any large scale, you know very well what it does to people's lives. Even sellers of tobacco and alcohol know that. Still, they do it, because they figure someone else would if they didn't... it's a huge "moral hazard", in market failure speak.
So, do you make $$$ by wrecking people's lives, or do you go out of business? I don't think people should have to face that dilemma, and therefore I think it's perfectly acceptable for us as a society to collectively say "no, we won't accept that way of getting rich". It's not a perfect solution, because laws are hard to enforce (especially with eroding support), but it's legitimate, that's my point.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
So prohibition is completely illegitimate, your premise is your are protecting people by imprisoning them, denying them their rights and turning them into hardened criminals, by creating the situation where as a result of their addictions they will associate with hardened violent offenders, and are creating a situation where funding is provided the growth and increased power of the most hardened and violent elements, which they in turn use the drug money to further corrupt and damage society. What is you goal, the elimination of drug problem by complete destruction of human society.
I see absolutely no dilemma in making adults responsible for their own decision.
As for distribution, obviously all harmful substances should be distributed in a controlled environment where an attempt is made to dissuade them from their poor choices and rehabilitation services are always made available, so that it does not reflect your assertion of mass marketing distribution system similar to tobacco and alcohol.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
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.
First of all drugs can be harmful to some people, in some circumstances, but for every victim of drugs there are hundreds of people who enjoy using the same substance and do not become a victim to it. Most people enjoy a drink but very few are alcoholics. The money these healthy people spend on drugs should easily outweigh the money required to rehabilitate and treat the unfortunate victims.
However even if that wasn't the case legalisation is still a better option than the current climate of criminalisation for a number of reasons:
1) Drugs supplied by criminals are a key source of income and power for criminal gangs and fuel criminal activity in other areas.
2) Drugs supplied by criminals have only the level of quality control the criminal gangs think they can get away with. Normal health and safety regulations could be applied to drugs only if they're not criminalised.
3) Drugs are in widespread distribution already, anyone who wants to try a drug can do so very easily so legalisation is not going to have a significant effect on the number of new users. For example at most club nights around here a conservative estimate would be 40% of the people there are on Ecstasy which you can buy within 30seconds of walking in the door - not just some clubs, ALL clubs !
4) The vast majority of drug users are not, otherwise, criminals and would not, ideally, want to fund criminal activity but the criminal nature of drugs does introduce people to a criminal underworld.
5) Legalised, quality controlled drugs you could buy at a shop would be vastly preferable to 99% of users cutting out the criminals profits almost completely. With no large profits to share around people would not take criminal risks and the criminal gangs would be largely very small scale operations.
I agree with this, I read somewhere that drugs basically cause three problems for our society:
When you legalize drugs, the first and second problem are (mostly) eliminated.
The first problem is eliminated because with no black market, drugs are no longer an 'underground currency'. Yes you will still have some black market for untaxed material, but it will be greatly reduced, dramatically reducing the power of the drug lords.
The second problem is eliminated because now drugs can be openly evaluated by third parties and the FDA. They can go through the same testing process as any other consumer product, such as cigarettes. At least people will know the risk of the product up front, instead of having to wonder whether they are buying cocaine-laced-pot, for example.
The third problem will still exist, and yes, may even increase, but as the saying goes, I'd rather deal with the challenges presented by too much freedom, rather than those resulting from too little.
'The staff in the hand of a wizard may be more than a prop for age,' -Hamá, the doorward
If (hard) drugs were legal, it would be very hard to prove murder by overdose, etc.
If guns were legal, it would be very hard to prove every murder committed with them wasn't a suicide.
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