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."
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
They'll also be able to tell if your city is pregnant
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
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
... 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.
... 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?
I mean, sure, they couldn't tie steroids to any particular player, but .....
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... when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.
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No, not at all! Return them to a pharmacist for disposal.
For (unsubstantiated) example, your local waste water treatment station is most likely using bacteria to do some of the work, imagine what a large dose of antibiotics will do to that process.
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."
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
"Insightful"??
w age/index.html
Water meters measured INCOMING flow from potable water mains.
If there is sewage flowing through your meter you have a problem:
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/US/05/29/drinking.se
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
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!
... but why let the constitution get in the way of national security?
Ask me about repetitive DNA
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.
No, I think only a small sample will do.
Gives a new meaning to "stool pigeon", doesn't it?
Blank until
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.
Please allow me to take this opportunity to agree with you.
Mmmm....tequila.
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- Don Julio
- Jose Ceurvo
- Sauza
- CabelleroNeal
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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.
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
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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.
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?
Why don't you ask my dad? He's been a labtech at the Riverside Wastewater Treatment Plant for over 20 years now. He told me last year that they made him start checking for metabolic byproducts of illegal drugs (I forget who he mails the results back to, either DHS or the White House, rather odd I thought).
Well I guess if you're not going to, I'll ask him later tonight.
I may make you feel, but I can't make you think.
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
http://www.cocaine.org/cocainenews/cocaine-rivers. html
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?"
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.
reduce money going into the black market. Thereby taking power away from the criminal organisations.
See my art -> http://herbevore.deviantart.com
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.
Okay, actually, he doesn't test it, he just mails(!) influent samples to the ONDCP (that's what the weird part was). He knows for sure it's to test for cocaine metabolite, not sure about others like methamphetamines. Been going on since March '06 apparently.
I may make you feel, but I can't make you think.
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Corzo!!!
Followed perhaps by Corazon, then Milagro....
Please, take Sammy Hagar's tequila off your list. Never drink tequila with a rhyming name.
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.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
Jesus, I'd just love to see the user interfaces *you* cook up!
Ecstasy: kills lots of people by means of deregulating body temp. and/or making them overdose on water.
Overdosing on Ecstasy can certainly kill in the method you describe, and it's happened to a "friend of a friend" of mine (no-one I know personally). So yes, it has dangers, but so do many other substances we legally consume. If it was legal, the dangers would be well known. I don't think anyone has ever died from a single E (or even two) that contains a normal amount of the active ingredients (mostly MDMA, but not entirely in most samples).
LSD safe?? Some people never come back from the trip. Some others keep having recurring flashes and trips, even years after taking it.
I've heard this a lot, but have NEVER been given a real world example or study to prove it. My (admittedly anecdotal, but fairly extensive) experience shows nothing related to these claims, as does all of the (also anecdotal, but in vast quantities) evidence presented to me by other users both online and in personal discussions.
I will readily admit it is possible that it effects some people differently to others and that it's possible that with the right brain chemistry/make up (such as with HPPD (Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder)) it could cause these kinds of effects in a very small sampling of the population (just as sugar is a dangerous substance (although in a completely different way) to people with diabetes if not controlled properly), but I've yet to hear of any hard evidence of it affecting people that do not have any such problem. It's a tricky one to really figure out, because if someone does experience flashbacks after having taken LSD, who's to say they didn't already have HPPD (or something similar) and it just never presented itself prior to their LSD experience? Also, many people experience the occasional "glitch in existence" (such as seeing things out of the corner of their eye, thinking they heard a knock at the door when no-one was there etc) in their daily lives (especially when very tired) and simply dismiss it, whereas those who have taken LSD and are worried about it may be more likely to notice it more often and attribute it as a kind of "flashback". My most vivid example of this is when I drove for 18 hours straight once after a long night (not on any drugs, except nicotine) and very little sleep - I arrived at my parents house, went to use the bathroom and noticed the floor tiles appeared slightly "wavy" - I do NOT attribute this to past LSD use, but instead extreme tiredness combined with having been moving at a rapid speed for a long time which alters perception anyway. The floor tiles stopped being "wavy" after about 10 seconds and then I was fine (although still dead tired!). Had anyone not familiar with LSD had an experience like this, they'd almost certainly put it down to the same factors I did, but just because I've taken LSD, people are quick to jump on the story when I tell it and say it's a flashback. And if those same people had taken LSD once, and were worried about flashbacks, would almost certainly call it one when they experienced it.
Please note that I'm not saying "LSD is harmless", I'm saying it's "very safe compared to pretty much any other drug" - I think it's safe to say that if use of it was harmful in even a noticeable percentage of cases, then prolonged or heavy use should be a much higher percentage, and yet we see many famous people (such as Lennon and McCartney of the Beatles) who have been heavy LSD users in the past with no obvious problems from it at all. Other examples of heavy drug users that also used LSD being somewhat "messed up" these days (eg Ozzy Osbourne), are ruled out as a fair example due to the high amount of other drugs they also took (so we can not fairly determine if it was the LSD or other drugs (or something else entirely) that caused the problem).
If anyone reading this is the kind of person who takes "notability" as significant, there are certainly notable people
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Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan