Comments on: Science of hair testing for drugs questioned in Boston cop case; cocaine blamed on cookies, donuts

By: donovan acree

donovan acree — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 13:55:00 +0000

Here’s the problem as I see it. These drug tests do not test for only the raw drug, they also test for metabolites. In other words, they test for what the drug breaks down to within your system as well. This makes it a trivial task to determine if the drug was environmental or ingested.

By: tré

tré — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 16:04:00 +0000

@twitter-209007841:disqus I know enough about Zappa to be pretty sure he’d rather have you thinking for yourself than reflecting some cherry-picked interpretation of what you think a dead guy you’ve most likely never met might have to say about the lives of yourself and others (even when that conflicts with what he ACTUALLY said).

By: Clevername

Clevername — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 13:36:00 +0000

Supposedly, hair picks up contamination from the air.

By: Joel West

Joel West — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 06:08:00 +0000

Rofl. Heart, get Zappa’s dong out of your mouth already.

By: ldobe

ldobe — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 19:58:00 +0000

I’ve heard rumors that 2C-B is sometimes cut with comet. 2C-B is an incredibly painful drug to snort is the rationale as to why they’d think to mix powdered bleach with it.

By: SmokingHeartDesigns

SmokingHeartDesigns — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 19:57:00 +0000

You don’t know enough about Frank to comment.

By: KBert

KBert — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 19:57:00 +0000

I’ve been wondering… you’re right.

By: ldobe

ldobe — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 19:54:00 +0000

@fuzzyfuzzyfungus:disqus A homeopathic drug? I’d guess.

By: Alejandro_the_Great

Alejandro_the_Great — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 19:50:00 +0000

I find it hard to believe that hair testing results in false positives. They generally us GC/MS (gas chromatography/mass spectrometry) to detect drugs. A molecule has a pretty definite fingerprint in this test. No other molecule is going to be detected at exactly the same peak in the GC and MS together. These cops are lying.

By: cavalrysword

cavalrysword — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 18:16:00 +0000

You think the narcs are in their right minds?

That’s a thought that never occurred to me. Familiarity breeds…

By: UncaScrooge

UncaScrooge — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 18:04:00 +0000

I once had a discussion with a friend who was a member of our armed forces. He had just returned from a week of debauchery in Mexico. Concerned for him, I asked how he expected to pass the drug test that awaited him on return to duty.

“If I smoke a lot of cigarettes and drink a lot of beer, I’ll pass.”

By: ChuckTV

ChuckTV — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 17:45:00 +0000

Hey guys, BoingBoing is showing this as the top post. According to Google Cache there should be a quite a few more above.

Edit: It’s apparently a Firefox issue. Not affecting Explorer.

By: rocketpjs

rocketpjs — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 17:18:00 +0000

25 years ago I started work in a factory owned by a US conglomerate (just after high-school). My roommate started the same day. We knew there was a drug test, but hoped to sneak past it.

My roommate and I had shared the same joint a few days earlier. He failed the drug test and I did not – he was fired and I worked there for 2 years. My only explanation is that I had an extra cup of coffee in the morning (more water in my urine) and that I was about 30 pounds heavier. I suspect that whatever the tolerance rate (i.e. 50 ppm) I was just under and he was just over.

After I’d been at the factory for a few months I found out that the manager who administered the testing was also the source to buy pot or hash if you wanted it. He would let people know a few weeks in advance of their test, and they would always pass with flying colors. Not much help for my roommate, but it was a shit job anyways so no long-term loss to him that I could discern.

In other words, testing is bullshit, and when the system is rigged it is all just a pantomime to please the bosses.

By: fuzzyfuzzyfungus

fuzzyfuzzyfungus — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 16:53:00 +0000

I guess Zappa was hitting the “of course free will is independent of biology, c’mon!” a little too hard?

When you’ve got the ‘Reefer Madness’ team running around, taking itself seriously, you do need some counterpoint; but if a drug doesn’t alter one or more of behavior, perception, or mood, what kind of lousy excuse for a drug is it?

By: Jerril

Jerril — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 16:25:00 +0000

Especially with some of the crap used in drug manufacture, and some of the crap used to cut drugs down at the street level.

By: AwesomeRobot

AwesomeRobot — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 15:45:00 +0000

It must be snowing cocaine today in honor of these upholders of justice. Here’s to hoping they’re back on the beat in Dorchester ruining the lives of minorities for committing the same crimes they were exonerated of.

By: peregrinus

peregrinus — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 15:35:00 +0000

Sounds like Boston is where I should set up my bakery!

By: SomeGuyNamedMark

SomeGuyNamedMark — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 15:28:00 +0000

Being from Boston myself my impression of years of stories about the Boston Police Union is that its main job is to prevent officers from being held accountable for anything. Its paper alone (“Pax Centurion”) is an exercise in racism and far right-wing politics. It even tried to prevent testing to see if officers were showing up to work with alcohol in them after there was a fire truck accident unless they got more money.

By: tré

tré — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 15:08:00 +0000

“That crap?”

“A drug is not bad. A drug is a chemical compound. The problem comes in when people who take drugs treat them like a license to behave like an asshole.” – Frank Zappa

Similarly, sobriety is not bad. Sobriety is a choice. The problem comes in when people who choose sobriety treat it like a license to behave like an asshole.

By: Rick Grubbs

Rick Grubbs — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 15:05:00 +0000

Maybe on tv, but what person in their right mind would taste a powder they did not know? It could be anything, poison, or anything really.

By: KevinRaposo

KevinRaposo — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 15:03:00 +0000

Being from Boston here, I find it funny that all of the cops in question had such bogus excuses for them testing positive. The donuts cop for example: Doesn’t he get training on how to identify cocaine. Especially with all his experience eating donuts, you would think he would know the difference?!

By: SomeGuyNamedMark

SomeGuyNamedMark — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 14:44:00 +0000

If you are looking for thin cops it may take a while.

By: SomeGuyNamedMark

SomeGuyNamedMark — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 14:42:00 +0000

The Boston Police Union and the Civil Service Board wouldn’t let you fire a cop in Boston even if they were found Scarface-like face deep in cocaine.

By: SovereignEntity

SovereignEntity — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 14:31:00 +0000

More tests. More screening. You can’t be certain. Test everyone and everything. Test the testers and then test the testers that tested them. Don’t stop testing. Everyone is on drugs! Trust no one!

By: IronEdithKidd

IronEdithKidd — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 14:24:00 +0000

If the Wikipedia article is at all acurate, hair testing only works for detecting metabolites for up to 90 days after ingestion, and not all illicit substances are listed as testable using hair.

By: Andy Dingley

Andy Dingley — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 14:18:00 +0000

Some years back, I was at a press conference where a new Chief Constable was advocating drug testing. A problem with such testing, as demonstrated in UK prisons, is that it preferentially detects less problematic drugs like cannabis rather than the faster undetectable and more troublesome cocaine.

In an excellent bit of prankster activism, another speaker managed to share some home made cake around beforehand. Very nice poppy seed cake it was too.

Halfway through the conference, they challenged the Chief Constable over drug testing and whether they thought _they’d_ be clean. Then they informed him about the poppy seed cake, which he’d already been eating. Although there’s nothing psychoactive in there and extraction isn’t really plausible, the metabolites are close enough for a hefty false positive.

By: Sam Pourasghar

Sam Pourasghar — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 11:50:00 +0000

I saw CSI London once, the real deal. They weren’t in designer suits or high heels, they looked like the guys in “Almost Famous” that worked in the hotel and came up to pump Lady’s stomach. Just regular people with wooly jumpers on. No glam, all business.

By: Anton Gully

Anton Gully — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 11:00:00 +0000

I think the point with hair analysis is that it can record results that have accrued over several months, if not years, whereas the evidence of drugs in urine goes away fairly quickly. It isn’t that the drug sticks to the hair, it’s that evidence of drug use is baked into the hair, so to speak, as it grows.

By: RyonRyon

RyonRyon — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 10:31:00 +0000

seems to me that just because the hair test isn’t conclusive evidence, that doesn’t invalidate it as a noninvasive (cheap? don’t know) method of easily flagging groups that do warrant further testing via urine or whatever else.

By: peregrinus

peregrinus — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 10:00:00 +0000

So we should all keep our eyes peeled for thin, wiry, anxious cops rushing around trying to make a bust?