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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."
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
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.
Possession of any polyethylene chains between 10 and 30 mers is hereby ILLEGAL! Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some microscopy to do on my water bottle...
Great Intellect...
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.
The real title turned out to be far less exciting.
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
As an employer that is realistic and wants good efficiency, you have no business trying to find out if employee x is on drugs unless the intox is blatant and/or dangerous.
Measure your employees by their ability to produce desired output; leave alone their human private lives and personal choices.
'Screening' employees for drugs only makes liars out of the honest people you hire. Drug tests should follow a workplace accident where intox is suspected. Otherwise you should fire them for honest reasons, like low productivity or focus or whatever real issue you observe.
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
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
And it is not even possible all the time, some people don't work individually and some people are not doing work that is exactly the same as other work and therefore easy to estimate how long it should take.
Just because you don't have any good metrics for measuring workers performance, why does that give you the right to make up arbitrary standards unrelated to the job?
If the tests were actual tests to measure intoxication then it would be reasonable, because you're right that you should be able to expect your employees to not be intoxicated on the job. However the tests don't measure that, they test if the user has been exposed to the drugs at any time recently. This doesn't mean they were intoxicated on the job, and for new hires probably doesn't even mean they were intoxicated while working for you.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
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.
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.
I had a very bad parent because of a genetic propensity to severe alcoholism. I am not an alcoholic. I drink but not often. My brother was an alcoholic but stopped drinking because he knew he couldn't do it responsibly so that it was all or nothing. He chose nothing. Some of my father's siblings drank too much but stopped. My grandfather was a raging drunk with a mean disposition. And so on down the line.
Stop making fucking excuses for people. People are not addicted to anything because of genetic predisposition or parenting. They get addicted because of their fucking actions. Fuck I hate... HATE this politically correct BULLSHIT. The drunk always had a choice so shut the fuck up unless you have something useful to say on the subject.
People are responsible for their actions unless they are mentally retarded, and even then many are still bright enough to be responsible. It's why many can live on their own and have jobs etc. The only people who aren't responsible for their own actions are people too mentally deficient to be or those with mental disabilities who need to live on a psyc ward. Now go find a commune and sing fucking Kumbaya with your friends and leave actual thinking to others.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
"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
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
Drug laws vary widely of course, but as an example, the US DEA drug schedules both directly specify molecules, including derivatives and precursors in some cases, and also have some entries like "barbiturates not specifically listed." In addition, they include the statement, "This document is a general reference and not a comprehensive list. This list describes the basic or parent chemical and does not describe the salts, isomers and salts of isomers, esters, ethers and derivatives which may also be controlled substances."
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
There's also the Federal Analogue Act that bans any substance that is "substantially similar" to a controlled substance. What this means is totally insane, and completely subjective. The dopamine your body produces endogenously is potentially illegal, since it's substantially similar to mescaline (3,4-dihydroxyphenethylamine, and 3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine). Your serotonin is equally problematic, since 5-hydroxytryptamine is substantially similar to dimethyltryptamine (DMT), which is Schedule I, *and also produced endogenously*.
CAPTCHA: hormone
Judging from your comment, it wasn't the drugs. You and the guys in your shop were just assholes being irresponsible with other peoples' property. /DBG
Sig not found.
If you guys were wrecking cars it was because you're a bunch of fucking idiots, not because you were high on pot. It's the complete lack of Giving a Fuck that leads to the risky behavior which results in injury and damage, and it happens just as much at a shop with squeaky clean people who have that type of attitude. And judging by a lot of shops I've worked in, seen, or known the workers of, most of you were also drinking and a couple of you were probably spun off your nut on Meth.