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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."
This does bring up an interesting point. Do laws contain chemical nomenclature and/or diagrams to differentiate extremely similar chemicals? How the hell does anyone in office manage to work that out if so?
This topic demands investigation.
Great Intellect...
Just like when we had prohibition of alcohol, people were going blind from stills, refusing to regulate pot means they can make poisonous alternatives. I've heard of people getting real sick and permanently maimed off of designer drugs. The worst that can happen with pot is that you try and drive somewhere intoxicated. Pot doesn't even cause lung cancer like cigarettes(You can google many mainstream scientific studies).
Legalization of pot would harm gangs who sell pot in addition to removing pot from being a gateway drug. Since people would no longer go to underground dealers for pot, they would no longer have access to the other underground connections.
God spoke to me
They already swab your hands for chemical residue if they think you might be impaired. They did it to me in Atlanta, I was shocked. And also probably logged as an entry into a database somewhere.
The best way is to decide if they are worth what you're paying or not, and then decide based on that.
No need to meddle in private lives.
What if the hypothetical drunk you wanted to fire, instead of the mildly slow person, was an alcoholic due to bad parents and genetic propensity? Are you now judging one natural outcome against another while lacking the informed compassion to understand that the drunk never had a choice?
Better yet, avoid being judged as an ignorant or incompassionate employer with one simple foundation: judge the employee as worth/not-worth their pay and leave their life alone.
I love you.
A while ago I was speaking with overheard someone talking about a friend being fired for being high at work. I asked him more about it. Apparently the guy had been working in the same job (welder) for around 15 years. He had consumed cannabis at work over that entire time. It wasn't until a new manager came in and decided to fire him for this. It had nothing to do with his performance, he apparently did his job very well.
"There's far too much to explore", said the man unwilling to explore recreational drugs.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com