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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."
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?"
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.
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'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.
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.