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Drug Testing Entire Cities at Once

Posted by samzenpus on Wed Aug 22, 2007 07:59 PM
from the be-careful-where-you-go dept.
Biotech Science
Ellis D. Tripp writes "Researchers have developed a technique for determining what illicit drugs people might be consuming in a given area, by testing a sample from the local sewage treatment plant. As little as a teaspoonful of untreated wastewater can reveal drug use patterns in a given community. Obviously, any drugs found can't be tied to any specific user, but how much longer until the drug warriors want to deploy automatic sampling units farther upstream of the sewage treatment plant?" From the article: "one fairly affluent community scored low for illicit drugs except for cocaine. Cocaine and ecstasy tended to peak on weekends and drop on weekdays, she said, while methamphetamine and prescription drugs were steady throughout the week."
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  • but..... (Score:4, Funny)

    by ILuvRamen (1026668) on Wednesday August 22 2007, @08:02PM (#20324725)
    what if someone flushes a bag of drugs cuz they know the police are gonna search their house? That'd make it look like 1000 people overdosed at once lol

    • Re:but..... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by martinelli (1082609) on Wednesday August 22 2007, @08:40PM (#20325099) Homepage
      No, actually. They look for the levels of drug 'remnants' in your urine, not the actual substance.

    • Re:but..... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Mr. Roadkill (731328) on Wednesday August 22 2007, @08:49PM (#20325187)

      what if someone flushes a bag of drugs cuz they know the police are gonna search their house? That'd make it look like 1000 people overdosed at once lol
      Although some of most drugs will probably be excreted untransformed, what they're probably looking for in the waste is particular metabolites. So, by looking for both drug metabolites and the actual drug they can probably identify both consumers and flushers.

      Another interesting application, if they check further upstream, could be identifying areas containing drug labs. Looking for high concentrations of drugs and various manufacturing by-products in the waste stream could identify neighbourhoods containing labs. I used to be vaguely acquainted with a police forensic chemist who told me that they regularly laughed at some of the amphetamine labs they busted - in some cases, 60%-80% of their yield was going down the drain.

        • Re:but..... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2007, @09:45PM (#20325665)
          If they took the huge amounts of money they spend on enforcement and used it to help people who were drawn to hard drugs in the first place...oh yah, we hate fixing things by helping people in the US. Ok, get back to jailing them.

          • question for moderators: (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Wakko Warner (324) on Wednesday August 22 2007, @10:14PM (#20325881) Homepage Journal
            how is the truth flamebait? the US incarcerates its problems.

              • Re:question for moderators: (Score:5, Informative)

                by Knuckles (8964) <knuckles.dantian@org> on Thursday August 23 2007, @02:40AM (#20327383)
                ...and nobody else in the world does?

                Not exactly nobody else. The US is in the good company of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia. [unece.org]

                Prison population
                In 2000, more than 2.8 million persons were in prison in the ECE region, with approximately 1.3 million in the United States and 700 thousand in the Russian Federation. In general, there were more prisoners in relation to the population size in central and eastern Europe, the CIS countries and North America than in western Europe. The highest rate in 2000 was found in Belarus and Kazakhstan with 550 and 546 prisoners per 100 000 population respectively. The rates were also high in the United States and the Russian Federation with 468 and 460 prisoners respectively (Table 13.7).

          • Re:but..... (Score:5, Insightful)

            by rtb61 (674572) on Wednesday August 22 2007, @11:51PM (#20326595) Homepage
            Well actually adults should be responsible for their decisions. So if they are foolish enough to take them, then the drugs should be provided cheaply and upon a non profit basis (beyond charging tax specifically for rehabilitation purposes for those who request it), subject to of course those people who are under the influence of their drug of choice do not presenting a significant threat of harm to the general public.

            So if the users wish to keep themselves quietly locked away at their own expense, then they should live with the consequences of the choices they make as adults, after all, it really is only a problem for the rest of society because of the high cost of those drugs and the dangerous criminal element associated with distributing those substances, who, in fact have a significant financial interest in making sure those substances remain illegal.

            Whilst I am content to pay taxes for the medical treatment of a drug addicts, or to assist in rehabilitation services for them, having to pay the enormous cost of enforcing the illegality of those substances, or imprisoning the addicts, or the crimes that result because of the high cost of those substances and their addictive nature. As far as I am concerned those idiot wowsers are far more of a problem for me than the drug addicts, as the drug addicts are problem, which rather bluntly, eventually solves itself.

              • Childish misconception. (Score:5, Insightful)

                by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 23 2007, @12:35AM (#20326857)
                You've bought into the Pusher Bogyman theory. Dealers come in many forms, PUSHERS is a completely made up term. Dealers don't pull strings to get people hooked, ask any pothead. They don't lurk around schools, or offer free drugs to 4th graders. 99% are just people trying to get by and using drug sales as their job. You never see a acidhead with a gun, unless he's planning to blow his own brains out. Same for Ecstasy and Pot Dealers. Crack dealers see it as their way out of poverty, they will do anything to get out even kill. Generally Violent Crime does not spill out into the regular people unless there are crossfires.

                People have been robbing and burgling long before drugs and they will be at it long after this phony war is over. Saying that drug addicts are behind it is foolish. The dangerous criminal element are generally not drug addicts, and they are by far more dangerous to other drug dealers then to regular folk.

              • Re:but..... (Score:5, Insightful)

                by rtb61 (674572) on Thursday August 23 2007, @01:13AM (#20327031) Homepage
                Have you any idea how cheaply those drugs can be produced, there is simply insufficient profit to draw in the number of criminals it currently does (also those criminals have far far less money with which to corrupt the political or legal process) ie. just look at the size of the illegal spirits trade, minuscule. It really is a silly argument, the drug user is either under the influence and content or they are not, stronger just leads to drug overdoses, hence, problem is still solved.

                Sure people will still steal, but the size of the problem is hugely reduced as they need to steal a whole lot less and as a significant benefit, those law enforcement resources which are currently wasted on the drug problem can be allocated to the burglary and mugging problem which currently is virtually ignored.

                The dangerous and violent criminal element is stripped of it's resources, and becomes a far more manageable problem and can be more effectively targeted with the now freed up law enforcement resources.

              • Re:but..... (Score:5, Insightful)

                by tftp (111690) on Thursday August 23 2007, @01:25AM (#20327091) Homepage
                "The only thing is that the moonshiners won't give up their lucrative trade willingly. They will market their alcohol as "better" or "stronger" than the stuff you get at a liquor store. It will still sell for a lot. And the alcoholics will still burgle and rob to get the money to buy it."

                On this planet, however, "good enough" is good enough for any alcohol drinker (or a drug user.) Getting an affordable drug when one needs it surely beats robbing a store and potentially getting killed. Drug users may be reckless but still not suicidal. Some addicts would be glad to stop, but their bodies changed to require the drug, and if forced to abstain they feel extreme pain. Under the threat of such pain an addict will rob and kill; however given an option I believe many would accept the government-sponsored drug, the pain will be gone just as well as when using a street drug.

  • Tracing Of Users? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by excelblue (739986) on Wednesday August 22 2007, @08:03PM (#20324731) Homepage
    I wonder, if they start doing more and more extensive tests, could they eventually determine the household in which the drugs come from? What's preventing them from testing the sewer water directly out of a house, instead of a waste plant.

    Will there be a need for sewer search warrants in the future? Hmm...

    • Re:Tracing Of Users? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Cassius Corodes (1084513) on Wednesday August 22 2007, @08:07PM (#20324793)
      How long before this information is used by drug lords for marketing? I wouldn't be surprised if they were interesting in funding further consumer studies.

    • Re:Tracing Of Users? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2007, @08:18PM (#20324877)
      From now on I'm only relieving myself on the neighbor's lawn.

    • Re:Tracing Of Users? (Score:5, Informative)

      by drsmithy (35869) <drsmithy@@@gmail...com> on Wednesday August 22 2007, @08:25PM (#20324953)

      I wonder, if they start doing more and more extensive tests, could they eventually determine the household in which the drugs come from? What's preventing them from testing the sewer water directly out of a house, instead of a waste plant.

      Economics.

      • Re:Tracing Of Users? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by surrealestate (993302) on Wednesday August 22 2007, @09:55PM (#20325735)
        Economics is in the eyes of the beholder, at least in the War on Drugs. The economical way to deal with the problem would be to buy the coca and opium crops from their home countries, sell the pure finished products in government stores, and tax the hell out of it, making it still 1/100th the price of the illegal version for guaranteed quality. Instead, we pump billions into the prison-industrial complex, and poor people subsidize bribes to law enforcement, and people pay the price of overdoses and adulterated product. The expenditures to collect and test sewer water directly downstream of specific houses will be a nice windfall for public works unions, law enforcement, the legal profession, the test lab industry, and manufacturers of chemical analysis equipment. And of course, if it saves just one child from starting a meth habit, it's worth it, right?

      • Probably not. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2007, @08:39PM (#20325091)
        As far as I'm aware, most US case law allows a warrantless search of an individual's trash, provided it's left in a public place or on the street. I see no reason why a similar notion wouldn't extend to whatever is flushed into the public sewer system.

        • An applicable Slashdot analogy (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Radon360 (951529) on Wednesday August 22 2007, @10:45PM (#20326107)

          You're probably correct on this, though I wouldn't be surprised to see someone argue it in court.

          Here's a workable Slashdot analogy for this: Just as one shouldn't link an IP address to a person (as the RIAA has tried to do), one shouldn't necessarily link what comes out of a household's sewage pipe to the person that lives there, either.

          My point being, just as someone can leech off an unsecured Wi-Fi in a home, someone from outside the household (i.e. visiting friend, relative) could conceivably use the bathroom.

          Then again, deployment of this type of surveilance would be kept plenty busy hunting down gross point sources like drug labs that they'd likely not bother to deal with individual drug use.

          • Re:An applicable Slashdot analogy (Score:4, Insightful)

            by sholden (12227) on Wednesday August 22 2007, @11:18PM (#20326341) Homepage
            That isn't what they would do. Obviously "We found some cocaine in the sewer coming from Bob's house so Bob must be have used and possessed cocaine" isn't going to what they go to court with.

            Instead they use that cocaine in the sewer as probable cause to get a search warrant to search the house. See all the trash searching leading to warrants in the past...

            And they wouldn't test all the houses, they'd test the ones they want to get a warrant for - for whatever other reason (resident has wrong skin colour, known drug users seem to visit often, etc, etc) that isn't good enough for a warrant by itself.

            Tracing child pornography downloads to your IP wouldn't be enough to get you convicted, it might get a them a search warrant though...

      • Re:Tracing Of Users? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by sholden (12227) on Wednesday August 22 2007, @08:44PM (#20325133) Homepage
        Would it not be the same as searching the garbage you put out on the street?

        http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?c ourt=US&vol=486&invol=35 [findlaw.com]

        • Re:Tracing Of Users? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by NMerriam (15122) <NMerriam@artboy.org> on Wednesday August 22 2007, @09:01PM (#20325273) Homepage

          Would it not be the same as searching the garbage you put out on the street?


          The difference being that if you have something incriminating to get rid of, you don't have to throw it in your trash can and leave it on the curb. In essence, the laws on trash are basically that you don't need to be "authorized" in order to pick up garbage, recycle it, dispose of it, reuse it, compost it, etc.

          In contrast, people don't generally have an option of what to do with their urine and feces -- for most people, it's leaving the building in a wastewater pipe. And you do need the be licensed out the wazoo and have legal agreements with a homeowner and the state before you can just tap into wastewater outflow.

          I suspect it would come down to the "expectation of privacy" standard, and most people don't expect their wastewater can be seen by anyone before it is processed, but it's a normal expectation that anyone can peek in an unsecured garbage can.

  • Utah results are in... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2007, @08:03PM (#20324733)
    Results for Salt Lake City show very high levels of LDS

  • And most importantly (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2007, @08:04PM (#20324747)
    They'll also be able to tell if your city is pregnant

  • Stupidity reaching new lows (Score:5, Funny)

    by infonography (566403) on Wednesday August 22 2007, @08:05PM (#20324765) Homepage
    This drug war foolishness is getting out of hand.

    My standing policy for piss testing is they have to collect it orally if they want if from me. Hot from the pipe.

  • meth (Score:4, Interesting)

    by farkus888 (1103903) * on Wednesday August 22 2007, @08:06PM (#20324783)
    Meth heads don't do less drugs during the work week, I wonder if that has something to do with them not having jobs. I am surprised with heroin supposedly being so addictive that it's levels drop off during the week. Am I wrong in assuming that the weekday to weekend usage ratio should be closely tied to a drugs addictiveness?

    • Re:meth (Score:5, Informative)

      by Verteiron (224042) on Wednesday August 22 2007, @08:17PM (#20324865) Homepage
      Actually the steady meth usage is probably from legal prescription drugs like ritalin and adderall. Drug tests can't distinguish them from illegal methamphetamines.

    • ADD (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Upaut (670171) on Wednesday August 22 2007, @08:23PM (#20324931) Homepage Journal
      I have a couple of friends with a prescription for meth-amphetamines for their ADD, as they are basically immune to all the other drugs that have been tried on them. My girlfriend has a prescription for THC as it is the only mood elevator that can control her bipolar condition. I have overactive production of an enzyme CYP2D6, meaning my medicine cabinet would make a heroin addict drool.

      We all have constant levels in our systems, stable jobs, and interact well in society. Just because someone needs to take these drugs do not mean that we cannot hold a job, or that we are scabs on society... And just because (aside from the THC, which is not addictive) our meds are addictive, does not mean our usage varies, because we take our daily dose as covered by our medical insurance.

    • Re:meth (Score:5, Interesting)

      by evanbd (210358) on Wednesday August 22 2007, @08:39PM (#20325079)
      Not all drugs are actually as addictive as the authorities would like you to believe. I regularly take amphetamines -- on prescription, for ADD. I don't take them every day, and I don't abuse them by staying up for days at a time. Heroin and the other opiates are actually similar -- addictiveness varies person to person, and is dependent on dose, usage pattern, and most interestingly the environment the person is in. People in a happy environment can be regular recreational users without showing evidence of addiction. Perhaps the most interesting lab study of this was the Rat Park [wikipedia.org] study -- interestingly enough, when you stopped stuffing the lab rats in tiny boring cages and gave them an interesting environment to live in, they lost interest in the morphine. Even when the morphine water was sweetened. Perhaps even more interestingly, *some* of the rats *sometimes* used the morphine in the better environment -- a pattern we might call occasional recreational use in a person.

  • Maybe it COULD be personally identifiable.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Reziac (43301) * on Wednesday August 22 2007, @08:13PM (#20324833) Homepage Journal
    ... if any of the, uh, extruded chemicals are bound to DNA, say from cells shed from the drug user's intestinal wall. Yeah, it's not practical (yet) to DNA-scan the entire populace, but I can foresee this being used to catch probation/parole violations (given that discontinuing drug use is often a condition of remaining loose on parole), where the perp's DNA is already on file.

    Take it one step further: insurance companies who don't want druggie-risks in their system, who might start requiring DNA on file as a condition of being insured.

    This has disturbing implications re privacy -- not now, but quite possibly a decade or two from now, especially given the direction the world is headed.

  • They can have my shit ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by bcrowell (177657) on Wednesday August 22 2007, @08:18PM (#20324875) Homepage
    ... when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.

  • Drugs by SIC code (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Saint Stephen (19450) on Wednesday August 22 2007, @08:23PM (#20324933) Homepage Journal
    In 1994 I had about 40 million drug test results on my 486-50 woo hoo! (I was writing a Microsoft Access program for the guy.)

    Anyway, I did a GROUP BY sic code and drug, descending frequency. The highest was construction workers, pot and cocaine. The second highest was school employees, alcohol. This doesn't mean who does what -- this means who gets busted for what in the tests, very different. Everything else was non-clustered.

    BTW, the guy had the hottest girls for reception and collecting specimens. I think he hired girls who didn't pass the tests to work for him. Fun girls ;-)

    Pillheads :-)

  • Whitehouse vs Outhouse (Score:4, Funny)

    by flyingfsck (986395) on Wednesday August 22 2007, @08:27PM (#20324975)
    They should test the outflow from the Whitehouse and Capitol...

  • And this was posted by none other than.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by zuki (845560) on Wednesday August 22 2007, @09:04PM (#20325303) Journal
    Original Post Submitted By -> Ellis D. Tripp

    This is just pure coincidence, right?

    Z.

  • This is NOT for Enforcement Purposes (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dubdecember (1146397) on Wednesday August 22 2007, @09:50PM (#20325697)
    This is by no means new. The purpose of these tests is to track usage patterns. Such patterns are useful for understanding how and when drug usage trends spread from city to city, in addition to usage patterns over the course of a week or month. It is totally inconceivable that these tests could be used to identify drug users. Even if it were technologically possible, the cost would be prohibitive. If you could arrest every current drug user for possession, we would have many, many million more criminals than our jails could hold, not to mention the fact that jailing drug users is an excessively harmful way to deal with what is really a health problem.

    • Re:This is NOT for Enforcement Purposes (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Bottlemaster (449635) on Thursday August 23 2007, @12:44AM (#20326913)

      Even if it were technologically possible, the cost would be prohibitive. If you could arrest every current drug user for possession, we would have many, many million more criminals than our jails could hold, not to mention the fact that jailing drug users is an excessively harmful way to deal with what is really a health problem.
      Actually our prisons are already over-crowded, and roughly half of the inmates are there on drug charges. Drugs are not "a health problem", because that implies that it's a problem for those of us who don't use them. We don't have socialized medicine in the United States, so drugs are personal problems. Personal as in nobody else's business.

      We can always build more prisons. Cost is no object when it comes to needlessly regulating the personal decisions of others.
  • The research lead, Jennifer Fields, has studied a number of waste water polutants, so scanning for narcotics is just another piece of the puzzle for waste water treatment. Gone (in the US) are the days when you could just disinfect public water with chlorine at the input and shoot it straight into a river at the output.

    Now, water planners have to consider a much wider range of crap, from all the acetaminophen, birth control hormones, caffeine, and - yes - dope we're pissing away, as well as the usual collection of bacteria, viruses, organic matter, pez dispensers, and whatnot. It's not only that you don't want that stuff in the water supply, you don't want it collecting in the fish from the lake, Bambi's mom in the woods, or that water you merely boiled when out camping.

    So, an increasing number water districts have to collect this information anyway. All that Fields did was analyze a portion of the data more intently. If your jurisdiction plans to stick a sensor into your waste stream at a point immediately before it commingles with that from your neighbors, you'll know about it 'way ahead of time, because it would be a Major project. Frankly, most water districts are so busy trying to keep everything flowing in the right direction, they couldn't be less interested in wasting time checking on your THC-related metabolic byproducts.

    • Re:So when does privacy end? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by drsmithy (35869) <drsmithy@@@gmail...com> on Wednesday August 22 2007, @08:36PM (#20325057)

      As much as the "well they are breaking the law/what do you have to hide" appeals to me, [...]

      It shoudn't. That's the sort of attitude tyrants depend on.

      Just wondering how you guys would draw the line.

      Well before the prosecution of victimless crimes like drug use. Alas, the legal system in most countries is far beyond where I would draw the line.

    • Blow Me (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Zero__Kelvin (151819) on Wednesday August 22 2007, @09:23PM (#20325455) Homepage

      "As long as drug use remains illegal, lamenting a particular detection/enforcement method is foolish."
      ... and you would surely agree that, as long as fellatio is illegal (as it is in many, many US states), lamenting the uninvited entry of police in your bedroom during sexual interaction is foolish ... Do you think before you type?

        • Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by hxnwix (652290) on Wednesday August 22 2007, @10:57PM (#20326173) Journal

          You are an asshat without a clue. I hope you have kids someday then you might understand.
          Actually no I don't because I don't want your genes continuing.
          These drugs you fear - what do you know of them, except that you fear them?
          These people you hate - what do you know of them, except that you hate them?
          These politicians you vote for - what do they do when they're not feeding your fear and hate?

          Why does this country, "home of the free and the brave," lock away 6x more of its population per capita than Europe? [wikipedia.org] What are we afraid of that we voluntarily throw away our bravery, conscience, constitution, respect for liberty, our fellow citizens and ourselves? How did we come to see these things as pitiable garbage?
          What do we achieve when we turn a promising young man caught with marijuana into a criminal, destroying his ability to enter corporate America?
          Is drug prohibition any more effective or less damaging to society than prohibition?

          Do benighted true believers like you stomp all over the most well intentioned, innocent of people for asking the big questions? Are you, in all your zeal and good intention, incredibly damaging to everything you claim to love and cherish?

          I feel badly for you, the country and the people that you help to destroy. I pray that you may somehow manage to escape from your ignorance, however unlikely it is that you will. I pray for us all. Please, Lord, show us all empathy and teach us all to love and do your work. May we learn to love our neighbors as we love our families.

          • Re:How can we end this war? (Score:5, Interesting)

            by YttriumOxide (837412) on Thursday August 23 2007, @03:41AM (#20327655) Journal
            The detriments are real and proven you say? Okay, please give me a link to a scientifically conducted study that shows negative effects (mental, physical or social) in excess of those of alcohol, for LSD or Ecstasy. I'm sure the information is quite easy to find for things like Crack Cocaine or Heroin, but really, Ecstasy is "fairly safe" (compared to alcohol) and LSD is "very safe" (compared to pretty much any other "drug" (legal or illegal)).

            "Getting High" (which by the way isn't really a suitable term for taking psychedelics since the effect is very different to "uppers", which is where the term comes from) may not be a human right, but I think it's fair to say that something being illegal just because it's fun is not a good thing.

            I am a regular, but light LSD user. I take it about half as often as I drink alcohol in quantities sufficient to notice the effects. That equates to approximately 10 times a year. I actually find the effects of it improve my ability to do my job (once the "trip" is over that is) due to the way it allows me to be more creative by thinking of things in new ways that I might not have otherwise considered - important for the software design phase of any projects I'm working on.

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