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Drug Testing

They're Drug Testing Our Sewage

I'll spare you the excrement jokes and just let this idea speak for itself:
Environmental scientists are beginning to use an unsavory new tool -- raw sewage -- to paint an accurate portrait of drug abuse in communities. Like one big, citywide urinalysis, tests at municipal sewage plants in many areas of the United States and Europe, including Los Angeles County, have detected illicit drugs such as cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana.

Law enforcement officials have long sought a way to come up with reliable and verifiable calculations of narcotics use, to identify new trends and formulate policies. Surveys, the backbone of drug-use estimates, are only as reliable as the people who answer them. But sewage does not lie. [Los Angeles Times]

Admittedly, assuming the methodology is sound, this appears to be a breakthrough technique for obtaining accurate drug use demographics. And it's already beginning to cast doubt on existing data, not surprisingly to the effect of indicating that drug use has been widely underreported:

The scientists were even able to use sewage to estimate individual use and weekly trends. For instance, they estimated that people in Milan used twice as much cocaine, about 35 grams per person per year, than Italy's government surveys had suggested.

That's kind of neat, I suppose, that they can figure out stuff like that. But ya know what? If our drug policy weren't a raging nightmare, drug testing raw sewage wouldn’t be even remotely necessary. Seriously, the moment the government finds itself digging around in our sewage to figure out what drugs we take, it becomes completely clear that we've screwed up our approach to drugs beyond belief. It shouldn’t even be necessary to formulate arguments as to why this is not the behavior of a healthy society. I mean, really. They're drug testing sewage. What's wrong with them?

All of this is symbolic of the utter lack of information and knowledge about drug use that we've achieved in the course of our abundantly destructive attempts to control this very behavior. Nothing could be easier than determining down to the bottle or butt exactly how many Heinekens™ or Newport Lights™ are consumed by the population, but in order to study marijuana use, we must collect frothing f#%king sewage into test tubes, mix in some noxious chemicals, and run the results through some mindbendingly complex algorithm?

Clueless and reeking of poo, the champions of our failed drug control crusade stand before us straight-faced and swear that everything is going according to plan.

Drug Tests Are Useless Devices That Don’t Even Work at Detecting Drugs

The Drug Czar's blog was very excited on Friday. Why? Because a school in Florida drug tested 120 students and all of them passed!

"It worked out very positively," [the principal] said this afternoon. "We did not have a single student test positive, out of 120 students we tested."

Random meant random, she said. Tests were done unannounced at different times during different days of the week. Some students were tested more than once, just because of the randomness of it all, she said. [Tampa Bay Online]
Admittedly, a random sample of 120 students testing negative for drugs is a surprising result. So surprising, in fact, that one begins to wonder how the hell it happened. Well the answer is simple: according to Tampa Bay Online, they used saliva tests, which are practically useless.

Via wikipedia, here are the estimated detection times for saliva drug testing:

So, basically, all 120 of these students could have been smoking hash and crack all night on Friday and still passed their drug tests on Monday when they got to school. I'm not saying that's what happened. I'm just saying that testing students' saliva doesn't prove whether or not they use drugs. That's not how it works, and any newspaper article purporting to celebrate the effectiveness of such a program ought to disclose that fact, lest it should become yet another arm in the Drug Czar's nationwide campaign to randomly collect bodily fluids from our children.

Drug Czars Say the Darndest Things

Deputy Drug Czar Bertha Madras delivered this gem in Colorado as she promoted random student drug testing to school administrators:

"We are not waging a war on drugs; we are waging a war of defense --
a defense of the basis of humanity, and that is our brain," said Dr.
Bertha Madras, the White House deputy drug czar in charge of reducing
demand for drugs. [Denver Post]


This is the same woman who argued against distributing overdose prevention kits, claiming that overdoses would teach people not to use heroin. So no, she's actually not very interested in "defense" against the harms of drugs.

She supports drug testing programs that don’t work, but opposes overdose prevention programs that do. Her ideas would make considerably more sense if her job were to make the drug problem worse.

Update: In comments, Giordano asks "Is Dr. Madras’ brain on the defensive?" Yes, I think that's exactly what's going on here.

Should Candidates For Public Office Be Drug Tested?

No, but it certainly is tempting to subject our political leaders to the same rampant privacy invasions endured by millions of Americans in the name of the war on drugs:
The S.C. Senate Judiciary Committee last week adopted a proposal that could result in a constitutional amendment requiring candidates to take a drug test before seeking public office. As tempting as it seems on the surface, lawmakers should analyze it carefully before they plow into it. There could be rocky ground ahead.

Many believe that if drug testing is employed widely in business, it should be employed in the government, too. What is good for private citizens should be good for elected officials. The goal is to eliminate the use of illegal drugs from the workplace, where a variety of harms might arise. [Beaufort Gazette]
Ok, I understand that people believe that, but why candidates specifically? Is there any evidence of party-prone politicians bumping blow on the public dime?
The proposal's origin started when former S.C. Treasurer Thomas Ravenel was indicted for possession of cocaine. He awaits sentencing, but shortly after the arrest, he checked into a rehabilitation facility. South Carolinians were embarrassed, and rightly so.

South Carolinians have dealt with tarnished images before. In 1903, Lt. Gov. James Tillman shot and killed N.G. Gonzales, a co-founder of The State newspaper, on Main Street in Columbia. Former Congressman John Jenrette was convicted in Abscam. Many S.C. lawmakers were indicted in Operation Lost Trust. S.C.'s agriculture commissioner was arrested for taking at least $20,000 to protect illegal cock fighting.
Cocaine! Murder! Bribery! Cockfighting! What do all these things have in common? You can't prevent them with drug testing. And yes, that includes cocaine, which only stays in your system for a couple days.

Just pause for one moment and contemplate the collective stupidity of all this. Aside from these presumably non-drug related cock-fighting scandals and whatnot, this pretty much comes down to one guy doing some coke and now everyone wants to drug test candidates for public office even though anyone can blast rails of coke all weekend and just declare their candidacy on a Wednesday.

Once again, the popularity of drug testing thrives on the failure of its proponents to comprehend basic facts about how drug testing works. I'd propose the creation of some sort of website to provide that information, but there are already 12 million of those. And, of course, if anyone on South Carolina's Senate Judiciary Committee comes forth to point out that drug testing isn't really very effective against cocaine to begin with, they inevitably render themselves susceptible to accusations of cocaine use and possibly even cock-fighting.

The Drug Czar's Blog Accidentally Admits That Drug Laws Ruin Lives

Yesterday, in a post titled "Random Drug Testing Can Save Lives," the Drug Czar once again blogged himself into a corner. The piece quotes extensively from a Kentucky newspaper article, which argues that random drug testing will save students from getting arrested:
"There was a tragedy in Scott County last week. A young man's future was ruined, and the events that took place will likely haunt him for the rest of his life.

Unless you've been on vacation, you've probably already heard that a superstar athlete on the Scott County basketball team was arrested on felony drug charges, which could result in him going to prison for as long as 10 years. [Georgetown News]

That's awful. But what does this have to do with random drug testing?

...Whether we realize it or not, the real tragedy is this young man wasn't caught sooner, through a less punitive program intended to help youthful offenders, not send them to prison. The greater tragedy, to my way of thinking, is that we, as a community and a school system, haven't seen fit to acknowledge reality and implement a random drug testing program in our high school, and perhaps our middle schools.

So what exactly did this young man do that could get him locked away for 10 years? He was arrested for 1.6 grams of crack on school grounds. Crack/powder sentencing disparity + school zone = 10 years for a one-day supply of drugs.

By conceding that this young man's life has been ruined, the Drug Czar does far more to indict our brutally unfair sentencing laws than to promote random drug testing. He is literally telling us that we should let him collect urine from our children, otherwise his drug soldiers will put them in jail for a decade.

And if that doesn't make your head spin, consider that cocaine leaves your system in 1-2 days and will rarely come up in a drug screen anyway. You can smoke crack all night on Friday and pass a drug test on Monday, so none of this whole insane conversation about saving people from crack laws with drug testing even makes sense to begin with.

Does Partnership for a Drug Free America Oppose Random Student Drug Testing?

As the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) parades around the nation promoting random student drug testing in schools, one of its biggest allies has remained conspicuously silent on this controversial issue. The Partnership for a Drug Free America (PDFA) has been the loudest "anti-drug" voice in America ever since its famous 1987 "This is your brain on drugs" ad and currently produces ad spots for ONDCP's National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign.

Yet despite extensive cooperation between the two organizations, PDFA appears not to have bought into ONDCP's hype surrounding random student drug testing. PDFA Parental Advisory Board Member Judith Kirkwood has vocally condemned the practice in the press and on her blog, calling it ineffective and invasive. Meanwhile, the PDFA website, which provides extensive "anti-drug" resources for families, only recommends drug testing at the discretion of parents, with suspicion of drug use, and under medical supervision.

For clarification, we contacted PDFA to verify the organization's stance on student drug testing. Surprisingly, their media contact was initially unprepared to address the issue. We eventually heard back from PDFA Deputy Director of Public Affairs Josie Feliz, who acknowledged that "We stay away from that a little bit. It's an individual decision for parents to make." Finally, when pressed, she said, "We don't have policy one way or the other on this."

Of course, saying drug testing is "an individual decision for parents to make," certainly sounds like a policy statement, and one which contrasts sharply with that of ONDCP. The Drug Czar has aggressively touted random student drug testing as a central tool in the effort to reduce drug use among youth. Indeed, his goal is without a doubt to collect urine from as many students as possible with minimal supervision and no individualized suspicion of drug use.

We can only guess why it might be that PDFA does not advocate random student drug testing, but possibilities abound:

*Tests frequently return inaccurate results.
*Numerous studies show testing does not reduce drug use.
*Testing treats innocent students as drug suspects.
*Testing encourages use of less-detectible/more dangerous drugs.
*Tests are easily obscured by cheating.
*Testing requirements discourage participation in extra-curricular activities.
*Testing requires school administrators to look at students' genitals while they urinate.
*Testing takes money away from programs that actually work.
*Testing distracts students and teachers from educational priorities.

Whatever their concerns may be, PDFA's unwillingness to promote random student drug testing is the correct position to take. It is unlikely that they would part ways with their colleagues at ONDCP -- undoubtedly a politically uncomfortable situation for them -- if they were not convinced that random student drug testing is the wrong answer in the fight to reduce youth drug abuse. All of this is symbolic of the growing consensus among physicians, addiction specialists, educators, parents, and students that these programs are severely misguided.

Drug Testing Encourages Cocaine, Heroin, and Meth Use

Anti-drug activist Debbie Fowler became a vocal supporter of student drug testing after her son Adam died from a heroin overdose:

Just a few weeks ago, Fowler testified at a congressional hearing for the Office of National Drug Control policy.

"I speak for them ... for funding of the president funding student drug testing programs," Fowler said. "I've done quite a few things for them." [Tribune-Democrat]

Certainly, Debbie Fowler would have liked to know about her son's heroin use before it took his life. Her motivations are very easy to understand. Unfortunately, she appears not to realize that drug testing encourages the use of the most dangerous drugs.

Schools rely almost exclusively on cheap urine tests, which can only detect cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine within a couple days of ingestion. Students know they can use these drugs on a Friday evening and test clean on Monday, so a random testing program is not effective at curbing use of these drugs. Unfortunately, the effect is sometimes quite the opposite.

Marijuana, the most widely used illicit drug, remains detectable for up to a month. Thus the proliferation of random student drug testing necessarily creates awareness among young people about which drugs are "safe" if you're worried about being tested. The switch from marijuana to stronger less-detectable drugs is a very real consequence of student drug testing, which has yet to be acknowledged by drug testing proponents.

I know that this problem is real because I've seen it first hand. In high school, I witnessed classmates asking around for drugs other than marijuana, precisely because they were being tested. Alcohol was the most popular marijuana substitute, but others surfaced as well. "You'll pass your drug test," became a selling point for substances other than marijuana.

This is just the truth about drug testing and how it effects the decisions young people make. Feel free to ignore me, or dismiss my judgments as the prejudiced fulminations of a pro-drug zealot. But drug testing, for very simple scientific reasons, has become a gateway to experimentation with more dangerous, less-detectible drugs. If anyone in the drug prevention community is wondering why student drug testing programs keep being proven not to reduce youth drug use, maybe you'll start thinking about these sorts of things.

Just Because Criminals Use Drugs Doesn't Mean Drugs Cause Crime

ONDCP's latest blog post boldly proclaims that drugs cause crime because most people who get arrested test positive for drugs. As is their habit, ONDCP's post was created by taking a newspaper article, misunderstanding it, and then drawing exaggerated conclusions that are factually wrong:

The Drug-Crime Link: Most Adults Committing Crimes in San Diego High at Time of Arrest

A new report out of San Diego County illustrates the strong connection between using drugs and committing crime. The North County Times reports:

"While the number of adults that test positive for drugs when arrested dropped slightly in 2006 compared with the year before, narcotics use continues to show up in more than 70 percent of arrestees, according to a report released Tuesday by the San Diego Association of Governments...

The headline alone contains two wildly inaccurate claims. For starters, being arrested doesn't mean you've actually committed a crime. Duh. This may seem insignificant, since drug use rates are probably the same or higher among those convicted. Still, it's a reflection of ONDCP's mindset that arrestees are simply presumed guilty.

More to the point, testing positive for drugs absolutely doesn’t mean you're high. Cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine remain detectable in your system for up to 4 days, while PCP and marijuana can linger for up to a month. We can identify these drugs in someone's body, but we cannot prove when the drugs were ingested or whether they were intoxicated at the time of arrest.

ONDCP's whole premise that drug use makes people go crazy and break the law is just not supported at all by this data. Addicted users frequently commit crimes precisely because they're no longer high, but they'd like to be. This link can be better addressed through maintenance programs and by eliminating the black market that inflates prices and forces addicts to steal.

Marijuana users, on the other hand, are unlikely to ever pass a drug test if they use more than twice a month. How many of these arrestees are just marijuana users who smoked days or weeks before an unrelated arrest? It's the most widely used and most detectable illicit drug, so its inclusion skews the entire picture.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there's a huge drug war going on, which causes drug users to be arrested at alarming rates. It's the number one thing people get arrested for. If we stopped arresting people for having drugs, the percentage of arrestees who test positive for them would decrease substantially. Literally, the government is arresting people for drugs, then claiming that you shouldn’t do drugs because they'll cause you to get yourself arrested.

Don't get me wrong, there is a drug-crime link, but it's not the one you read about at PushingBack.com. It's a product of the great war we've declared on one another, and it will go away only when we admit our terrible mistake.

Positive Drug Tests Don't Prove Impairment

Maybe you've heard the story: Worker gets injured on the job. Employer, anticipating hefty workers compensation claims, administers drug test. Wouldn't you know it, injured employee tests positive for marijuana and is denied compensation due to presumed impairment.

Of course, since marijuana remains detectable for weeks after use, it is just wrong to presume that a positive result indicates impairment at the time of the accident. Still, many companies continue to fire injured employees for marijuana, rather than compensating them for on-the-job injuries that had nothing at all to do with their off-the-job marijuana consumption. It is a morally-reprehensible and scientifically-fraudulent practice, but one which serves the financial interests of its practitioners and thus continues.

Finally, for the first time that I know of, this sickening practice has been challenged successfully in court:
The Tennessee Supreme Court has ruled that a worker whose hand was crushed by machinery at his workplace was not to blame for the accident despite his admitted marijuana use off the job.

…

The state law establishing the drug-free workplace program presumes that any injuries to an employee found to have been using drugs or alcohol were caused by the drug use. But the court noted that the law also allows employees to enter evidence to rebut that presumption.
…

The co-worker and the shop foreman both testified that McIntosh didn't appear to be impaired by marijuana use before the accident.

McIntosh, who had worked at Interstate for five years, contended the injury was caused by the actions of an inexperienced employee. [Forbes]
So often in drug policy reform, we must celebrate victories of common sense that could be taken for granted if anti-drug hysteria had not permeated every aspect of our lives. How absurd is it that McIntosh even had to prove his lack of impairment? After all, it is perfectly clear and undeniable that a positive test for marijuana doesn’t prove impairment at all. There was never any evidence of impairment at any point throughout all of this, yet it had to be decided by the state's highest court.

While the Tennessee Supreme Court has certainly made the right decision here, one shudders to think how many marijuana users have been thrown to the dogs under identical circumstances. The premise that marijuana ruins lives – almost universally false though it is – somehow becomes a justification for profiteers seeking to validate the most despicable treatment of people who've used marijuana.

These events serve to remind us that prohibition is more than police, prisons and politics. It an idea – corrupt to its core – which infects everything, entering our schools and workplaces to spread false prejudice and obscure even the most obvious truths.

Home State Blues, or What's an Itinerant Activist To Do?

Your itinerant Drug War Chronicle has been bouncing around North America for the last few years, spending significant amounts of time in Washington state, British Columbia, Mexico, Northern California, and my home state, South Dakota. The traveling is nice, but I’ve felt politically homeless, as if my presence anywhere were too fleeting for me to be able to do local or state-level politics, and that’s a frustration. So, as much as I would rather be elsewhere, I’m thinking I need to hunker down here in Dakotaland and try to get something done. It is not friendly territory. South Dakota is the only state where voters rejected an initiative to allow the medicinal use of marijuana. Although it was a close vote, 52% to 48%, it was still a loss. Medical marijuana bills (introduced by an acquaintance of mine) early in the decade went nowhere. The state has one of the fastest growing prison populations right now, thanks largely to its approach to methamphetamine use. Marijuana possession is routinely punished by $500 fines, and there is a good chance of jail time, too. (In fact, you may be better off being convicted of drunk driving, if my local court records are any indication.) And, most hideously of all, South Dakota is the only state I know of that has an “internal possession” law. That means when the police arrest you with a joint, they make you submit to a urine test, then charge you with an additional offense if you test positive. South Dakota judges also routinely sign drug search warrants that include forced drug tests. I know one gentleman currently serving a five-year prison sentence for “internal possession” of methamphetamine metabolites, and no, it wasn’t a plea bargain. That was the only charge they had. South Dakota’s drug reform community (which can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand) seems beaten down, but I think I’m going to reach out and see if I can’t get anyone interested in a four-pronged drug reform legislative package: Hemp. Our neighbors in North Dakota have passed a bill allowing farmers to grow hemp and are currently suing the DEA to force it out of the way. South Dakota farmers would like to make profits, too. Medical marijuana. Yeah, we lost a close one last year, and it’s never been able to get any traction in the legislature. But I think we should make them deal with it again. Our neighbors in Montana seem to be surviving medical marijuana. Marijuana decriminalization. Does South Dakota really think pot possession is more serious than drunk driving? Does the legislature understand the lifelong impact of pot conviction on its constituents? Our neighbors in Nebraska decriminalized pot back in the 1970s, and the cornfields are still standing. Repeal of the internal possession laws. Criminalizing someone for the content of his blood or urine is just wrong. Winning any of these will be an uphill battle, and perhaps even linking hemp to broader drug reform issues would spell its doom here. But I think it’s every good activist’s responsibility to do what he can to slow down the drug war juggernaut, so I’m going to give it a shot. What are you doing in your state?
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