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Cocaine Use Can Now Be Tested In Fingerprints Using Ambient Mass Spectrometry
hypnosec writes: A novel technique of detecting cocaine abuse through a simple fingerprint has been developed by researchers from the UK and the Netherlands, paving the way for a secure, non-invasive drug detection method. The research, led by University of Surrey and published in the journal Analyst, demonstrates for the first time that cocaine can be detected by the excreted metabolites – benzoylecgonine and methylecgonine – resulting from abuse of the drug. These chemicals are found in fingerprint residue, which the researchers detect using analytical chemistry technique known as ambient mass spectrometry.
lets spend billions upon billions to stop people from doing things to themselves, not even taking the 4th amendment into consideration
Im not condoning abuse, but im also not condoning the absurd spending that we as a planet have done "for the children"
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Congress will likely forbid this technology in the USA, lest it interfere with their favorite past time.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
How sensitive is this test? From what I understand, a tremendous percentage of currency is 'tainted' with the residue of one illicit substance or another. This may wind up just being a test to see if someone has handled money recently.
An internal system operation returned the error "The operation completed successfully.".
So are we to assume consumption that's not abusive won't leave detectable metabolites? Or, are the researchers assuming all use is abuse? And, can you imagine how much this test costs?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
wouldn't handling money give false positives?
...cocaine can be detected by the excreted metabolites...resulting from abuse of the drug.
What about those that don't abuse cocaine, but use it responsibly?
Your post:
Also to detect anyone who has any money, for confiscation of evidence of course
vs the summary
[...] by the excreted metabolites â" benzoylecgonine and methylecgonine â" resulting from abuse of the drug.
Sure. Unless simply handling money doesn't result in your body absorbing enough cocaine to synthesize and excrete " benzoylecgonine and methylecgonine".
In other words, you are probably entirely wrong.
As opposed to the proper use of the drug?
In other words, you are probably entirely wrong.
Under civil forfeiture, the GP might not be wrong. If drug use is detected, anything and everything can be taken, car, house, kids, all of it. Poof, up in smoke...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Why choose the term abuse, instead of use or consumption?
>implying these residual metabolites won't be found on dollar bills, which will easily transfer to your fingerprints as it is obviously soluble in the stuff that comprises a fingerprint.
You might want to think back to your basic chemistry before talking much further.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
So, when do we start testing every politician?
I'm a heavy user infact, but I've never abused it. I use it exactly how its intended - I snort it up my nose.
Is it unlikely? Probably. Am I entirely wrong? No.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...
it is worse than that. There are stories of people having their life savings taken even without being charged with a crime
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
You keep using that word abuse of the drug.
Somewhat interesting is the joint effort between a British and Dutch university team.
As it is legal in their country the Dutch had to do the sniffing and the Brits did the detection of the resulting metabolites?
It is good science, for sure.
For forensic evidence it is really good as this cannot come from just touching some US Dollar notes, you got to at least eat and digest them.
But this will only be interesting once it can detect if a person is under the influence of the drug, merely punishing on past use has only one winner, the privatised penal institutions.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
What kind of abuse does this new method detect? Talkum substitute? Scrubbing powder? Disinfectant? Or rather its intended, designated illegal-but-certainly-non-abusive employment as the psychoactive, addictive drug it happens to be.
You can abuse a screwdriver to kill somebody; using a gun for the same purpose is still illegal in most circumstances, but it would not be "gun abuse".
ignatius
Note that this method does NOT work with a printed copy of the fingerprint, only the original fingerprint itself. That is because it detects chemicals which are sweated out onto the skin. and when the finger is pressed to the paper, the sweat is pressed onto the paper. The cocaine does NOT change the shape of the swirls; it only adds invisible chemicals to the sweat and ink on the paper.
Almost everything you tthink of as a fingerprint is actually a photographic copy of a fingerprint, and the method does not detect anything from the copy. So police can use it on suspects, but you can't look at Barack Obama's published fingerprint in the New Yrok Times to see what he's been swallowing recently.
You linked to an article about the detection of surface cocaine; which amounts to evidence that you have handled cocaine -- and the well known miscarriage of justice where they use evidence of surface cocaine as evidence of handling cocaine, when we know that traceable amounts of cocaine is on our currency.
This however is a test that establishes whether or not you USE cocaine. A little surface cocaine on your money isn't going to have you sweating out these chemicals in any significant quantity. So your thesis that this test is going to lead them to confiscating your money doesn't really add up.
Further, this test, a chemical test showing that you've recently TAKEN cocaine ... how does that amount to evidence that the money in your wallet is from the drug trade and therefore evidence of crime and subject to confiscation? It doesn't even sort of kind of add up.
It's pretty trivial to develop procedures to isolate what you might be transferring to your fingers from things you handle to what you are literally secreting from your fingers.
ok...don't excrete. inhale.
"Drugs and drug metabolites in hair were initially thought to originate exclusively from within the body, i.e. from ingestion.(8) and (9) Over the past 15 years studies implicate external contamination’s role in undermining the reliability of hair (10) and (11) as well as sweat patch (12) and (13) test results. Unless the origin and transfer modes are known unequivocally, few definite conclusions can be drawn from the presence of drugs and metabolites beyond “exposure.”
The abuse of civil forfeiture is well documented; but this test isn't really relevant. If they intend to abuse civil forfeiture to take your stuff, this test isn't going to be their go-to.
And if they don't intend to abuse civil forfeiture, all this test does is establish evidence that you've taken cocaine.
If drug use is detected
They need evidence of drug related crimes. Technically, past drug *use* isn't even illegal.
Fair enough. I maintain that controlled tests can relatively easily determine if a chemical is being excreted vs simply being contaminated by external sources.
But it certainly means you can't draw any conclusions from a fingerprint obtained without those controls.
Still makes the test useful potentially useful for employment screening. Less so in other scenarios.
They need evidence of drug related crimes.
Ah well, no problem, man
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
What did the five fingers say to the face?
- Rick James
Don't sweat it. Seriously, don't. Nowadays they can tell all kinds of stuff from your sweat.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
What a waste of time and money, jailing people $40,000/yr.
Do you want to pay for that?
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
I see no reason why these researchers shouldn't be pilloried. Taking state money to improve methods of spying on the citizenry is not a positive act.
You're forgetting the for-profit civil forfeiture power they have.
I guarantee you someone is working a spreadsheet figuring out if they buy a bunch of high tech scanners and can get more people with positive results they can seize a lot more stuff to pay for it.
Test positive? We'll take everything you have on you, your car and possibly your house and we can do it all now without any court approving it. You have to prove to us that it's not ill-gotten gains.
Current detection systems already have enough false positives, eating some poppie seed muffins/bread, taking some ibuprofen, etc will trip some tests. This test sounds like it uses much smaller samples so I would imagine it would be far more susceptible. And as others have noted most money has trace amounts of various drugs (cocaine, heroin, morphine, etc) adding a completely innocent vector for false positives. The entire concept of trace drug testing is flawed, testing for significant recent usage MIGHT have some reasoning but these tests looking for usage days, weeks or even months out are foolish, destructive and pointless.
simply handling money doesn't result in your body absorbing enough cocaine to synthesize and excrete " benzoylecgonine and methylecgonine".
As the limits of detection get smaller and smaller, the chances are that I could detect one molecule of almost anything on you. So how much is legally enough to charge you?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Why do you care if someone uses cocaine when you hire them? Aren't you hiring them for their skills, not their 'hobbies'?
it is worse than that. There are stories of people having their life savings taken even without being charged with a crime
Yeah but for some schizophrenic reason they still call it the "land of the free". "Denial" isn't just a river in Egypt you know.
Oh yeah and from the summary, this is ridiculous.
A novel technique of detecting cocaine abuse through a simple fingerprint has been developed by researchers from the UK and the Netherlands, paving the way for a secure, non-invasive drug detection method.
Yeah there's nothing invasive whatsoever about having your unique fingerprint on file, never to be deleted, and linked to the results of a drug test with an unspecified fase-positive rate and no appeals process. Really? The War on (some) Drugs is bullshit to begin with, and the fact that it provides so many excuses for shit like this is just one of many reasons to end it (other reasons being the freedom of consenting adults, and a notion of justice with this being a victimless crime).
Anybody who wants drugs can get them. They cannot even keep drugs out of PRISON. That's just a fact, even though the prison environment strongly favors the people trying to prohibit drugs. Oh and it's easier for teenagers to get illegal drugs than it is for them to get alcohol since drug dealers don't ask for ID. The War on (some non-patentable, not pushed by Big Pharma) Drugs is a failure. It's past time to stop this futile effort and move on to something that might work, such as regulated legal sales to adults. It only took about a decade for people to realize that alcohol prohibition was not going to work. Sure, the intelligent freethinkers knew that before it was made law, but listening to them is not popular. It's been close to a century since we tried prohibition of other drugs and it's a failure. It amazes me the way people will continue to support failing ideas in the face of all evidence to the contrary. Must be a religious deal?
It's pretty trivial to develop procedures to isolate what you might be transferring to your fingers from things you handle to what you are literally secreting from your fingers.
Thankfully, lipid-soluable metabolites like those produced by marijuana should be much more difficult to detect than water-soluable substances like cocaine. So at least there is a little bit of fairness - with piss tests, the harmless pot smoker can fail a test more than a MONTH after using their drug, where the meth or coke user can pass a test after only a few days. That could only encourage people to use harder drugs if they fear being tested.
simply handling money doesn't result in your body absorbing enough cocaine to synthesize and excrete " benzoylecgonine and methylecgonine".
As the limits of detection get smaller and smaller, the chances are that I could detect one molecule of almost anything on you. So how much is legally enough to charge you?
Let's hope it's a higher threshold than the false positive for opiates after eating poppy seed bagels!
General skills, aka the ability to succeed in society without reverting to drug abuse, are considered when a company is hiring.
I'm not excusing it, just explaining it.
You are more likely to be discriminated against for benign hobbies like being into electronics or hobby computer programming, than for drugs. HR types want template employees who can be impressed into the Work Instructions regime as outlined in the Job Description these days, not well-rounded people with an extreme interest in the things they work with.
Now with automatic cocaine detected via TouchID. :)
Any source for this? (Really asking).
For drug dealers, perhaps the status quo. But for drug users, perhaps we should focus on reform and helping them. Treat it as a sickness and not necessarily as a crime.
I'd be worried about false positives with this test.
Is a political slogan for feeble-minded people. Some doled out tax money was needed after the USSR collapsed 30 years ago to keep defense contractors afloat.
Would the drug cartels like to change the current situation with the drugs being illegal? Massive profits with no taxes, and where uncooperative individuals are expected to be found in a ditch face down?
I bet the status quo is good for business.
Chemcial tests can't tell whether a person is absuing drugs, only if they are using them. (It is a prohibitionist fiction that the use of certain drugs is inherently abuse.)
If the only way you can tell whether someone is using drugs is through chemical tests, ipso facto it is not affecting their performance on the job.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Almost all people that I know never touch coke any more. Also here seems to be out of favour with the current going to clubs generation/younger generation.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Wrong. It's drug possession with intent to distribute that gets your stuff taken. Simply sweating microscopic amounts of chemicals doesn't qualify. Hell, unless you're out of jail on probation they can't do a fucking thing to you. It does qualify as a violation of probation in most instances.
Drug use represents all kinds of potential problems. Usually you can figure someone with a cocaine addiction isn't going to be a good bet for a solid worker long term. Given other equally qualified potential employees I'd not consider hiring the druggy.
be sure now to get a new stamp pad of ink each time you get finger printed.
Oh and make sure you get the finger print tech who holds your fingers and rolls them over the card drug tested. Go ahead and insist on that the next time you are fingerprinted.
Let me know how that works. LOL
Your post:
Also to detect anyone who has any money, for confiscation of evidence of course
vs the summary
[...] by the excreted metabolites â" benzoylecgonine and methylecgonine â" resulting from abuse of the drug.
Sure. Unless simply handling money doesn't result in your body absorbing enough cocaine to synthesize and excrete " benzoylecgonine and methylecgonine".
In other words, you are probably entirely wrong.
Aha... but all it would take is ....
the soap in the bathroom of the police office to be contaminated
with benzoylecgonine and methylecgonine and then any perp
could be convicted by simply getting them to wash their hands.
The article implied that it could not be manipulated but there are some articles
that describe the synthesis of cocaine beginning with what the
article asserts are metabolites.
Further there are privacy issues. Should a crime scene have a lot of
fingerprints (a public or near public place) then testing prints for metabolites
would be invasive in many cases. Yes I was there Tuesday officer
but I was back in Europe on Wednesday and Thursday when the murder
took place. However now this individual is tied to drug consumption.
Seems clever from an instrument point of view but could be used to
build a synthetic profile around a crime that ties a "person of interest"
to another crime unknown to the authorities, unknown because it was
fabricated and did not exist in the real world.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Use doesn't imply addiction. It is unwise to conflate the two.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I can listen to JJ Cale and detect cocaine use just from the lyrics of the song! How cool is that?
Sure, but the question is will such procedures be used?
The War on (some non-patentable, not pushed by Big Pharma) Drugs is a failure.
Ah, but I disagree. Its purpose is manifold, but the two biggies are the erosion of the constitution to keep the prison/security state growing and fed, and the profits of Big Pharma.
This sad state of affairs has been slowly engineered over decades by some very wealthy and influential people as a goal to increase their power and wealth.
It's not a failure - it's a wild success. Sucks that you and I aren't on that list of winners though.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Nope, a guy driving to California to buy a car he bought on eBay took cash. It was confiscated because the cop said he thought he drove from WI to CA to buy drugs. Which is absurd. There are plenty of drugs in WI, IL, and every state on the route. There was no suspicion of actual criminal activity, other than a cop's unsubstantiated hunch.
Learn to love Alaska
Does it establish that a drug user sweated on your money? If your money tests positive, then it should be seized, right?
Learn to love Alaska
What we now need is a spray containing those two critters in just the right proportions...
Why even treat it as a sickness?
Is eating fast-food a sickness? A lifetime of abusing McDonalds will leave you in a FAR worse position than a lifetime of "abusing" Cannabis (though one might lead to the other!). On the other hand, plenty of people responsibly enjoy fast food and don't damage themselves in the process.
Why is parent modded Off-Topic? It's spot-on.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Even a stopped (analogue) clock is right twice a day.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
No, the question is who is his out her right mind would knowingly develop a test like this? It has one purpose: to increase the power of police and employers. We don't need any more of that. We need intelligent people to get a sense of ethics and stop working against humanity.
A bunch of uncited opinions followed by a derogatory term. Yeah, we can really take you seriously in a debate.
Idiot.
How does the test distinguish between use and abuse? A certainly level of cocaine usage is arguably not abuse.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
That's one smart test, if it can tell the difference between use and 'abuse', the word the article likes to use. Sorry, abuse.
Just make sure the tested person have not bathed in the river Po, downstream from Milan at anytime recently.
That's not a false positive. It is a positive test. It is up to the administrator of the test to decide if the result is significant to their purpose.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I'd like you to explain exactly which tests make a chemical substance react differently depending on its origin.
That's called homeopathy.
Almost all money has had contact with Cocaine and many other street drugs. Since the drugs are already on the money, detecting them in fingerprints may not indicate a user, just a money handler which is NOT a crime anywhere.
Could somebody use a spectrometer, or modified spectrometer to analyze from afar a "chem-trail"? It's about time somebody debunks the lunatics (lunatics being the conspiracy-theorists or the deniers-overlords).
2cts
Unless simply handling money doesn't result in your body absorbing enough cocaine
It's a safe bet that whoever rubbed the cocaine on the money in the first place likely has enough of it in them to be rubbing the metabolites on the money too.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
But if they are willing to do that, then it really doesn't matter what this fingerprint test reveals, wouldn't you agree?
Non-use does imply they are not actively addicted though. So selecting non-users effectively screens the problem addicts out.
The fact that it screens out users who aren't addicts as well? I don't dispute it. But what employer cares? As long as they get enough good candidate applicants from the non-using pool to hire from, the fact that they screened some potentially good candidates from the using but not addicted category isn't much of a concern.
Aha... but all it would take is ....
the soap in the bathroom of the police office to be contaminated
And all it takes to resolve that is using individually wrapped soap packets.
I don't disagree with the rest of your post vis a vis privacy, invasiveness, etc.
Does it establish that a drug user sweated on your money? If your money tests positive, then it should be seized, right?
Because they have evidence my money was handled by a sweaty drug USER? How is that even theoretically illegal? Why should it be seized?
Aha... but all it would take is ....
the soap in the bathroom of the police office to be contaminated
And all it takes to resolve that is using individually wrapped soap packets.
I don't disagree with the rest of your post vis a vis privacy, invasiveness, etc.
Individual packets establish a clear non random way to contaminate an individual's hands.
The key is who is in control of the soap and it is not the accused.
Adds an entire new perspective to "do not drop the soap".
New technology can be used for good or evil. Understanding it
only begins to lock it down. Voting machines --- too easy to hack
evidence that can be falsified or more troubling woven into an airtight
net that ensnares the innocent on demand.
TLAs that sit on flaws in common operating systems so they can
exploit them simply keep the door open wide for abuse. Since the
flaws are unreported bad guys, good guys and those of androgynous
morality can play with impunity as long as the list is not too long.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
If it is drug-tainted, it's up to you to prove you didn't get it by selling drugs to a drug user. That's how Civil Forfeiture works. It's not illegal to have drug money, but it's also not illegal for the government to take it and never give it back.
Learn to love Alaska
Sorry about the derogatory term but I've had too many people I know that turned into druggies. For every casual user it seems there are 5 or 6 that get consumed. The exception is marijuana where most people can function okay and only a smaller percentage become "pot heads."
If it is drug-tainted, it's up to you to prove you didn't get it by selling drugs to a drug user.
Clearly its not tainted by any drugs you may have sold. You would have gotten the money before they took said drugs, and any residue from them taking the drugs would not appear on the money.
At worst they've proven you've transacted with a person who takes drugs. That's not even slightly illegal.
QED.
That said, yes, civil forfeiture is often abused. And as I've replied elsewhere in the thread a couple times -- if they are out to abuse civil forfeiture -- then it really doesn't matter what the outcome of this test is; they'll just take your possessions on some other flimsy pretext. (Simply having significant cash on you, within 100 miles of a border, irrespective of any drug evidence has been sufficient in the past for them to seize it....no need for a chemistry set)
Bottom line: this test really has no bearing on the problem of civil forfeiture.
The only reason you would take cash regularly from a drug user is if you are supplying him with drugs.
QED
Learn to love Alaska
The only reason you would take cash regularly from a drug user is if you are supplying him with drugs.
Not really. Perhaps I work as an employee under the table and my boss is a drug user. OR his wife who picks it up at the bank is. Or the manager who actually hands me my pay. Or maybe its even the bank teller at the business counter at the bank.
In any case, it would take several separate tests over a period of weeks to establish that I take cash regularly from a drug user. Otherwise, the money could be from pretty much anything... maybe he bought my kids bunk bed frame at our last garage sale...
The FBI apparently found that screening out pot users hurt their recruitment, although they backtracked on that statement once they got orders from above that they can't be that honest publicly. It's a competitive disadvantage to needlessly remove a pool of employees.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
It's a competitive disadvantage to needlessly remove a pool of employees.
It can be yes. I specifically said that as long there was sufficient suitable candidates after screening out users it wouldn't be a concern to the employer.
It goes without saying that if there aren't sufficient suitable candidates after screening that you'll need to go back and start looking at those screened candidates.
Your anecdote is an example of this happening; and I don't dispute that it happens; but that hardly makes it universally the case that what is true for one large organization and one (especially widespread) drug is true in all cases or for all drugs.
Just follow the path of least resistance.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
For every casual user it seems there are 5 or 6 that get consumed.
It seems your citation was lost somewhere.
No, it's not a positive if the hypothesis being supported by the test (drug abuse) is not the actual cause, it's a false positive. It's a Type I error. The person being tested may have also erred by eating poppy seeds before a drug test, but it's still not a positive test result for drug abuse or use.