Testing for Many Designer Drugs At Once 281
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."
The Devil Snorts Prada (Score:5, Insightful)
Not Regulated... (Score:1, Insightful)
... means it's not illegal. Try explaining that to an employer that can't get past a "positive" test.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
False Positives, anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you see Hancock movie. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Insanity. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm the sort of guy who can't personally empathize with chemical escapism (our time in reality is far too limited as it is for my tastes, and there's far too much to explore) - but really, it just seems complete insanity to expect to help anything by denying it as harshly as we do to others, at least in the US.
The best path would seem to be to defuse the need, and eliminate the allure, rather than spend such a huge percentage of our shared wealth on prisons and enforcement, all while simply breeding worse problems.
There's endless pits of dependency - the harsh 'solutions' of endless punishment only seem to dig the holes into deeper, stranger territory - spreading the drug problem into endless splinters.
As a non-drug-user in general, I'm sick of paying the hidden tax of an inefficient drug policy. I'd rather have open drug use and pity the over-users, rather than have to pay for such an abnormally high portion of our population to remain in jail, contributing greatly to the ruin of our economy.
Ryan Fenton
Re:False Positives, anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
False positives stopped being a concern around the time that "reasonable doubt" was replaced by "irrefutable proof of innocence."
Re:Not Regulated... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
OR (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Paramilitary Police (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Not Regulated... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Insanity. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm the sort of guy who can't personally empathize with chemical escapism (our time in reality is far too limited as it is for my tastes, and there's far too much to explore)
Ah, but if you indulged for a while in, your nauseatingly patronizing term, "chemical escapism" you would realize that there is yet even more reality to explore, dork.
Simple question... (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Legalize everything. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Not Regulated... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Not Regulated... (Score:3, Insightful)
Drunk on power is smiled upon though...
Re:Insanity. (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah, the power of the 'Dare' program -> it's kind of like your favorite party's or country's propaganda: you live in the best country in the world, why would you ever want to vacation elsewhere? you're already in the right party, with the right beliefs, why question those beliefs? etc.
Knowledge not gained first-hand is worth its weight in sand.
Re:Not Regulated... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Let people do drugs, and let them rot (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not Regulated... (Score:3, Insightful)
Drugs tests are for the 99% (Score:4, Insightful)
The 1% don't do drug tests. What more do you need to know?
Re:Not Regulated... (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe you are as intelligent as a monkey... it sounds like it... but I am more intelligent than one. That is why I can CHOOSE not to be an alcoholic. That is why people can recognize their genetic predisposition and CHOOSE not to be alcoholics. Unless they are intelligent as a monkey.
Just because you have a predisposition doesn't mean you have to live up to it. Stop making fucking excuses for alcoholics and junkies. You know 4 years ago I ruptured a disk and pinched nerves in my back. I was taking up to 4 or 5 prescribed 80mg Oxycontins a day. But even while on it I tried to limit myself to only when needed and occasionally would forget if I took one at the proper time (that is what it does to you)... when I started to get withdrawal symptoms like spiking a fever, the runs, upset stomach... I would realize I didn't take the pill on time, take one, and the symptoms would disappear in 20 minutes. After I had surgery to correct this, it took 4 months to get off of the painkillers. I CHOSE to get off the painkillers. But after nearly a year on Oxycontin make no mistake I was... WAS... physically addicted quite strongly. After the surgery and a few years on, my back still hurts but nowhere near as much. It is as good as it will get at about 70% recovered. I take ibuprofen, aspirin or acetaminophen. Once every couple of months I may need to take a Percocet. But that is it. One. If anyone has your kind of excuse to be an alcoholic junkie it is me. But I am not one. I don't cut any slack for anyone who is one. It is a choice pure and simple. Stop making fucking excuses for people because they choose to be addicted.
If you choose to act as stupid as a monkey, it is your choice. But it is a choice, not an excuse.
Re:Not Regulated... (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Sounds like you are an alcoholic. (Score:0, Insightful)
You certainly exhibit the rage, arrogance, lashing out and lack of control. Dehumanising others is a classic symptom of (co)dependence.
Denial is not a river in Egypt.
Get counseling. It's not just for those you consider inferior beings.
Re:Not Regulated... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Not Regulated... (Score:2, Insightful)
You act like it is somehow inherently wrong to be addicted to something or to use non-addictive drugs recreationally. This is because of your experience with a genetically predisposed alcoholic family. If you were more intelligent then that monkey you would have recognized this and worked through it already. Since clearly you are not i would suggest getting help from a psychotherapist.
Do you think you should have been fired from your job while you were taking the oxycotin? Regardless if you have legitimate pain or not the effects of the drug are precisely the same. Did you go to you boss and do the right thing and tell him that due to your drug use you no longer deserve to be paid because you are now taking an evil narcotic which instantly renders you unworthy of your wages? Or were you partaking in some of that politically correct bullshit that just because you are sick you should still be paid money and get to keep your job even though you were impaired both physically and chemically. Lovely when it works for you don't you think.
Being drunk on the job is obviously wrong. Smoking pot, or taking opiates after hours has little to no effect on the performance of you job. For some people it would even help them. If drugs were legal, employers would be handing out cocaine and amphetamines to their workers due to the productivity boost it provides. The only effect it has on life is that it drains money, however this is an artificially created situation. If they were legal they would be dirt cheap and big pharma would give use drugs that are 10x better with less side effects.
There is nothing evil about drugs. What is enormously evil is little people like yourself who feel it is morally justifiable to control the lives of other and trample upon their natural liberties.
Re:Not Regulated... (Score:4, Insightful)
Hate to undo my mod points for this, but I think you're horribly off base. As someone who works in a very dangerous industry where safety is a big deal (container shipping), I can see the point of it. You point out that it selects for drug users who are good at passing screens, the counter to that is that it weeds out people too stupid to either pass screens or not do drugs. Whether or not they get past it by being proactive and not doing drugs, or being proactive and finding a way through the screening process, the fact remains that both examples are proactive and demonstrate higher intelligence than someone who simply doesn't give a damn.
In an industry where one mistake can result in a pancaked human being under a 40,000 lb box and there are frequent traffic issues on container terminals that we try to engineer out, we can't just wait for an incident to happen and say "you shouldn't have been drunk." That's irresponsible, spiteful, a bad way to do business, and a bad way to treat your worker. The role of an HSSE worker is to stop accidents before they happen, and drug screenings are one of the many tools in that box to get irresponsible people out of a dangerous environment.