Slashdot Mirror
Testing for Many Designer Drugs At Once
LilaG writes "Drug tests spot banned substances based on their chemical structures, but a new breed of narcotics is designed to evade such tests. These synthetic marijuana drugs, found in 'herbal incense,' are mere chemical tweaks of each other, allowing them to escape detection each time researchers develop a new test for one of the compounds. Now chemists have developed a method that can screen for multiple designer drugs at once, without knowing their structures. The test may help law enforcement crack down on the substances. The researchers used a technique called 'mass defect filtering,' which can detect related compounds all at once. That's because related compounds have almost equal numbers to the right of the decimal point in their molecular masses. The researchers tested their technique on 32 herbal products ... They found that every product contained one or more synthetic cannabinoid; all told, they identified nine different compounds in them — two illegal ones and seven that are not regulated. The original paper appears (behind a paywall) in Analytical Chemistry."
From the article: "The research is timely, too. 'Many drugs of abuse in the Olympics are designer drugs,' he [Gary Siuzdak] says, in the steroid family. Grabenauer plans to extend her method to other designer drug families."
Can't wait to be forced to provide mouth swabs at airports.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
... means it's not illegal. Try explaining that to an employer that can't get past a "positive" test.
address the greater issue of biblical retribution as drug policy i dont see science being able to contribute anything meaningful. Occams razor would suggest the simple solution to whatever the hell OP means by "synthetic marijuana" is just to legalize marijuana itself.
the 'war on drugs' is such an abject failure that that not even our presidents and congress comment upon unless to reinforce the consistently disproven negative myths and stereotypes. Until we apply a modicum of science to determining what vectors cause drug abuse in society, all we're doing is inventing new ways to fill prisons.
Good people go to bed earlier.
So, um, what's the false positive rate with this test? For a while people were being convicted of cocaine trafficking because the money in their pockets had traces of cocaine. Eventually it was disclosed that ALL (US) currency has traces of cocaine.
Remain calm! All is well!
He did 80 million in damages to stop a freeway chase.
That is what the government is doing to tax payers with this crap.
End the drug war and give old people back there social security.
I am sick of footing the bill for anything they can think of.
I'm the sort of guy who can't personally empathize with chemical escapism (our time in reality is far too limited as it is for my tastes, and there's far too much to explore) - but really, it just seems complete insanity to expect to help anything by denying it as harshly as we do to others, at least in the US.
The best path would seem to be to defuse the need, and eliminate the allure, rather than spend such a huge percentage of our shared wealth on prisons and enforcement, all while simply breeding worse problems.
There's endless pits of dependency - the harsh 'solutions' of endless punishment only seem to dig the holes into deeper, stranger territory - spreading the drug problem into endless splinters.
As a non-drug-user in general, I'm sick of paying the hidden tax of an inefficient drug policy. I'd rather have open drug use and pity the over-users, rather than have to pay for such an abnormally high portion of our population to remain in jail, contributing greatly to the ruin of our economy.
Ryan Fenton
or... we could just make pot legal so people wouldn't be smoking these horrifically dangerous "Bath salts" as a replacement. Pots dangers are well known, and relatively benign in comparison to even most over the counter medications. You're far more likely to become dependent on cold medicine and even be killed by it than you are pot. But we continue to treat pot like it's some kind of hardcore child killer.
They are right, Pot is a gateway drug. But only because they made it so. They tell school children its this horrible thing. Bad kids do it. Then the kids find out just how many of their friends smoke it at parties. Holy crap! and then they try it... and it doesn't make them go insane like they've been lead to believe. If they've lied to me about pot, how bad can cocaine be right?
Make it legal to grow. Legal to smoke. Legal to give away for free to someone over the age of 18. Make it illegal to sell. Problem solved and no more bath salts.
the 'war on drugs' is such an abject failure
That depends on your definition of "success." Since its inception, there have been the following goals in the war on drugs:
Notice something missing from that list? Public health and safety. That's at the bottom of the priorities list in the war on drugs, because the war on drugs never had anything to do with health or safety.
Palm trees and 8
Why? Do we not have enough people in prison to make it sufficiently profitable for the new privatized penal industry?
Isn't the meteoric increase in worker productivity over the past decades enough for our economic overlords? Is it just to make sure we all know who's boss?
Did you know that the industry-funded legislative group ALEC is behind many of the new harsher drug laws? I really don't understand it. Why is an industry-funded lobbying group so concerned about marijuana, gay marriage, gun laws and keeping the poor, students and the elderly from voting?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Let people smoke, shoot, drink, or otherwise ingest anything they want. Tax drugs, use part of the tax to pay for the societal costs of drug abuse, and go from there.
Intoxication should be considered an aggravating factor in any crime, and should be made a crime in and of itself in certain situations (see driving under the influence).
Making better tests is interesting in an academic way, and possibly useful for certain professions where sobriety is absolutely essential (law enforcement, for one example), but honestly, who gives a fuck for most anything else? If drug use affects your work you'll get fired in time anyway, and if you do harm to another person while high you're screwed anyway.
I'm saying this as someone who works in public health - the damage done by this kind of prohibition VASTLY outweighs the societal benefit of restricting drug use. There's absolutely no question about it.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Fine: But you don't get to go to bars anymore, you're not allowed to go skiing, play football, or anything else that I deem unnecessary to your life which might raise my group insurance plan rates. Also, you have to wear a helmet outside. This is my polite way of saying fuck you and your flawed philosophy.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
The 1% don't do drug tests. What more do you need to know?
You certainly exhibit the rage, arrogance, lashing out and lack of control. Dehumanising others is a classic symptom of (co)dependence.
Denial is not a river in Egypt.
Get counseling. It's not just for those you consider inferior beings.