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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.
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.
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
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
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.