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."

Comments

Tracing Of Users?

[excelblue]

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...

Re:Tracing Of Users?

[Cassius Corodes]

How long before this information is used by drug lords for marketing? I wouldn't be surprised if they were interesting in funding further consumer studies.

Re:Tracing Of Users?

[sholden]

Would it not be the same as searching the garbage you put out on the street?

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?c ourt=US&vol=486&invol=35

Re:Tracing Of Users?

[lenroc]

IANAL either, but I seem to remember things a bit differently. Garbage tossed in a *public* dumpster is fair game. Trash in your trash can is still yours, up until the sanitation guys actually toss it in the truck.

To the contrary, I've always heard that it is public property once you place the garbage out for collection. This is backed up by a Google search, which turned up among others:

Garbage is Public Property on Curb

Admittedly, though, you can probably "prove" anything with the right Google search.

Re:Tracing Of Users?

[NMerriam]

Would it not be the same as searching the garbage you put out on the street?

The difference being that if you have something incriminating to get rid of, you don't have to throw it in your trash can and leave it on the curb. In essence, the laws on trash are basically that you don't need to be "authorized" in order to pick up garbage, recycle it, dispose of it, reuse it, compost it, etc.

In contrast, people don't generally have an option of what to do with their urine and feces -- for most people, it's leaving the building in a wastewater pipe. And you do need the be licensed out the wazoo and have legal agreements with a homeowner and the state before you can just tap into wastewater outflow.

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, but it's a normal expectation that anyone can peek in an unsecured garbage can.

Re:Tracing Of Users?

[dysfunct]

Related fact: Even your president (or at least the Secret Service) expects privacy when it comes to his sewage. When Bush came to visit my country, he brought his own portable toilet and toilet paper and refused to use any other toilet.

meth

[farkus888]

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?

Re:meth

[evanbd]

Not all drugs are actually as addictive as the authorities would like you to believe. I regularly take amphetamines -- on prescription, for ADD. I don't take them every day, and I don't abuse them by staying up for days at a time. Heroin and the other opiates are actually similar -- addictiveness varies person to person, and is dependent on dose, usage pattern, and most interestingly the environment the person is in. People in a happy environment can be regular recreational users without showing evidence of addiction. Perhaps the most interesting lab study of this was the Rat Park study -- interestingly enough, when you stopped stuffing the lab rats in tiny boring cages and gave them an interesting environment to live in, they lost interest in the morphine. Even when the morphine water was sweetened. Perhaps even more interestingly, *some* of the rats *sometimes* used the morphine in the better environment -- a pattern we might call occasional recreational use in a person.

Re:meth

[maj1k]

there is such a thing as being a functional meth addict. i was for close to 10 years before i decided to stop using. held down a job as a computer programmer the entire time, even started and ran a record store for 3 years as a hobby.

yes, i used every day but i definitely used more heavily on the weekends.

Maybe it COULD be personally identifiable..

[Reziac]

... 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.

ADD

[Upaut]

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.

Re:ADD

[timmarhy]

jesus you and your friends sound like an unhealthy bunch. i don't know 1/2 that amount of people with that many conditions.

Drugs by SIC code

[Saint Stephen]

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 :-)

Re:but.....

[martinelli]

No, actually. They look for the levels of drug 'remnants' in your urine, not the actual substance.

I'm amazed that it got accepted, actually....

[Ellis D. Tripp]

I've submitted a few other stories in the past dealing with the War on (some) Drugs, and they never seem to make it.

For a site populated by as many privacy advocates and libertarian types as /., there always seemed to be a big blind spot as far as the drug war is concerned.

Re:How can we end this war?

[YttriumOxide]

The detriments are real and proven you say? Okay, please give me a link to a scientifically conducted study that shows negative effects (mental, physical or social) in excess of those of alcohol, for LSD or Ecstasy. I'm sure the information is quite easy to find for things like Crack Cocaine or Heroin, but really, Ecstasy is "fairly safe" (compared to alcohol) and LSD is "very safe" (compared to pretty much any other "drug" (legal or illegal)).

"Getting High" (which by the way isn't really a suitable term for taking psychedelics since the effect is very different to "uppers", which is where the term comes from) may not be a human right, but I think it's fair to say that something being illegal just because it's fun is not a good thing.

I am a regular, but light LSD user. I take it about half as often as I drink alcohol in quantities sufficient to notice the effects. That equates to approximately 10 times a year. I actually find the effects of it improve my ability to do my job (once the "trip" is over that is) due to the way it allows me to be more creative by thinking of things in new ways that I might not have otherwise considered - important for the software design phase of any projects I'm working on.