 
                            .
                         .:::::.               .::::::::.
                     ...:::::::::..           ::::::::::::
                  ..:::::::::::::::::..      :::::     ::::
                .:::     :::::::     :::.    :::::.      :
                 ::       :::::       ::      :::::::.
                  :        :::        :        :::::::::.
                           :::                    ::::::::
                           :::                        :::::
                          :::::               :        ::::
                          :::::  oxic        :::......::::  hock
                        .:::::::.             :::::::::::
                       :::::::::::             :::::::::
 
 
 
 
                                   presents
 
                               INSIDE URINALYSIS
     
     By Dean Latimer
     SOURCE: High Times, p34  (issue unknown at the present time)
     Typed by Fetal Juice
     Toxic File #81
 
     
          *Drug urinalysis is a fraud and a swindle.*  This month we're
     running a thoughtful, lucid, even-handed piece on the legal
     developments surrounding drug testing, written by San Francisco
     attorney Steven Rhoads, as a public service.  Readers who haven't
     followed every issue of HIGH TIMES for the last five years will
     undoubtably have missed some of this information, and so Mr. Rhoads'
     article provides a good opportunity to re-present these important
     legal data in one place.
          I feel, however, that Attorney Rhoads is almost *too* even-handed
     in addressing this issue.  He courteously gives the promoters of drug
     urinalysis credit for at least being honest in their basic
     motivations: to benevolently protect society from a perceived "drug
     epidemic" by testing people with what they believe to be accurate,
     reliable methods and instruments.  And to be sure, many urinalysis
     promoters undoubtedly do cherish the delusion that drug use in America
     is at "epidemic" levels, and are so ignorant of technology and basic
     human physiology that they think wholesale urine testing is a rational
     response to their fantasy of a drug epidemic.
          The loudest prompters of drug urinalysis, though - most signally,
     current and former "scientists" associated with the National Institue
     on Drug Abuse - are perfectly aware of the basic falsehoods they spout
     to promote the testing racket.  They know that the national incidence
     of drug use as dropped dramatically for every year throughout the
     '80s, with the single exception of cocaine use.  Since even the
     coke-use statistics aren't really *drastically* higher then the
     former, there really is no drug epidemic raging in this country at
     all.  To go by NIDA's own statistics, in fact, people in the '80s -
     and *especially* teenagers and young adults - have been pretty
     sickeningly well-behaved all through this decade.  This rather
     depressing development is nowhere better illustrated then in NIDA's
     annual survey of drug abuse terends among teens and young adults, the
     "Monitoring the Future" series, available free from NIDA to anyone
     skeptical of what they're reading here.  All the drug-use indicator
     graphs go *way* down throughout the '80s, with the single exception of
     cocaine use.  So they're all lying when they bleat about an American
     "drug epidemic," and therefore no reason exists to give  them credit
     for honesty.
          As for the truly sorrowful prevalence of cocaine nowadays in the
     American workplace, street market, and schoolyard, the piss-test
     profiteers also know perfectly well how drug urinalysis does *worse*
     then nothing to ameliorate this supposed epidemic.  Cocaine is
     virtually undetectable in urine less then 36 hours post-ingestion,
     providing a virtually useless "catch window" for urine monitors. 
     Moreover, anyone deft enough to toot a line of coke through a
     rolled-up dollar bill is certainly deft enough to palm a litle salt or
     ammonia into his or her urine sample (regardless of whether anyone's
     "watching" or "taking the sample temperature" or whatever) to blank
     it.  Therefore, the only people who most often get in trouble with
     cocaine urinalysis are victims of false positive reading.
          The piss-test profiteers know how easily *that* happens, too. 
     Every year, hundreds of thousands of people have to take
     over-the-counter patent medications containing *atropine*, an
     all-purpose drugstore nostrum employed for the alleviation of
     everything from asthma to diarrhea to seasickness.  Since it's closely
     related in basic chemical structure to the cocaine molecule, atropine
     *can* cross-react with cocaine on simple urinalysis screenings,
     causing a "positive" test result.  The non-druggie thus becomes a
     victim of an imprecise technology, suffering loss of employment,
     intense confusion and personal anguish, and ostracism by *his*
     non-drug-using peers.  Proof that this happens is not hard to come by,
     and it's known to all the primary pushers of urinalysis testing.
          However, the fact is that no one can hazard even the remotest
     guess as to how *often* it happens.  The various professional services
     that monitor the reliability of respectable licensed laboratories -
     such as the national proficiency-testing program of the College of
     American Pathologists in Chicago - simply do now bother to include
     atropine among the drugs they send to the labs for testing. 
     Therefore, since no one can possibly calculate how *often* atropine is
     mistaken for cocaine in routine urinalysis testingnoke-testing is
     "safe" for the piss-test profiteers: no one can sue a lab for ruining
     their life with a false "cocaine" positive, because there just aren't
     any statistics on false coke positives to begin with.
          But the profiteers, just as they know perfectly well that there's
     no drug epidemic in America, also know that *some* of the people
     ruined by "cocaine" positives were really only takeing hay fever
     medications.  They know it, but they don't mention it.  And whether
     they supress this information because they're personally prepared to
     have these innocent people crucified for the greater good of their
     stated social ideal - a "drug-free workplace" - or whether it's just
     because the truth would certainly get them sued, and just possibly
     *jailed*, is immaterial.
          These peoples are lying.  They're  perpetrating a pernicious
     fraud that makes money for them: a swindle.  There is no sense in
     kindly giving frauds and swindlers credit for having basicaly good
     intentions even when they *do* have good intentions.  In fact, unless
     you come straight out and call them criminals, you leave them an
     unobstructed field for their criminality.
 
      (c)opied from some High Times..Fetal Juice/Toxic Shock  July 1990
 
 
