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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."
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
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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
... 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?
... when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.
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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
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.
Please allow me to take this opportunity to agree with you.
Mmmm....tequila.
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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.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
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
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.
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.
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
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