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tdubz



Registered: 02/26/12
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The Plan to Test Cities’ Sewage for Drugs Is a New Form of Mass Surveillance
#24034667 - 01/23/17 09:55 PM (7 years, 7 days ago) |
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https://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-plan-to-test-cities-sewage-for-drugs-is-a-new-form-of-mass-surveillance
Nearly every drug you snort, inject, smoke, butt-plug, vaporize or freebase eventually ends up back in the water supply via your excrement. The fish love it—well, maybe not the ones mutating from it. But apparently crabs and trout aren't the only ones sifting through your waste.
Across the globe, researchers at wastewater treatment plants are testing for psychoactive substances passed by drug users through their feces and urine. The data can be incredibly valuable, letting scientists and law enforcement quickly track drug use trends and identify new substances on the market. It can also measure the impact of drug policy strategies, even highlight which days of the week drug use spikes (cocaine on the weekends, anyone?).
But with this research comes some ethical entanglements. Testing waste could help anticipate the sharp rise in carfentanil or fentanyl overdoses, for example, by detecting the drug in sewage. But the same strategies can be used to stigmatize against certain populations, and as we've seen with the War on Drugs in the US, this could have lasting consequences for those communities.
*
Wastewater analysis may become commonplace in the United States in a few years, because while there are challenges to getting accurate results, it’s very easy to get samples.
Traditionally, drug epidemiologists have had to rely on questionnaires, but such surveys aren’t cheap and are riddled with response biases since many drug users aren’t keen to tell the truth about breaking the law. On the other hand, you can easily measure all the fallout of drug use: HIV transmission, overdose, rehab check-ins, ER visits, death. But those infrequent incidents only happen after the fact.
Drug testing wastewater was first proposed in 2001 by Christian Daughton, a scientist from the Environmental Protection Agency hoping to raise awareness of the ecological impact drugs can have. Only around half of personal care products and pharmaceuticals are removed by treatment plants in a troubling “pee-to-food-to-pee loop.” These pharmaceutical contaminants—known as “chemicals of emerging concern”—have researchers in Seattle and Baltimore scrambling to understand their effect on wildlife.
But that’s working downstream—what about upstream?
Italy in 2005 became the first country to use mass spectrometry, a tool that measures atom and molecule mass, in water samples to approximate local cocaine consumption, discovering that Italy’s longest river, the Po, “steadily carried the equivalent of about 4kg [of] cocaine per day,” equal to 40,000 daily doses.
In 2013, researchers looked at 47 WWTPs in 21 European countries, analyzing the narcotic-laced ordure of nearly 25 million people. Australia, which has performed wastewater tests in the past, is spending $3.6 million to test 30 sites across the continent, monitoring not only methamphetamine use, but also alcohol. Now the idea is spreading across China, with at least five similar studies planned in the next six months.
In mid-December 2016, New Zealand became the latest country to latch onto this trend and have already begun looking for traces of meth, cocaine, heroin, α-PVP (also known as “flakka”), MDMA and creatinine (a naturally-occurring human byproduct, used for a control.)
But New Zealand’s approach is somewhat unique. Researchers from the Institute of Environmental Science and Research, are also working closely with police. In most cases, this analysis is done by researchers alone—but this kind of tandem relationship may become more common.
Only a few such tests have been conducted in North America—a couple near Albany, and several in Oregon and Washington, for example—but as the practice catches on, and as drug detection technology improves, wastewater analysis is likely to become routine.
“Like so many sort of new ideas, a lot of people don’t want to be the first person on the dance floor,” said Dr. Caleb Banta-Green, a senior researcher at the University of Washington’s Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute. He’s been scouring wastewater for drugs in King County and elsewhere for eight years. “But there’s a point when you look pretty bad being the last person on the dance floor,” he said.
On November 16th, the National Drug Emergency Warning System (NDEWS) presented a webinar titled “Using Wastewater Testing as a Drug Epidemiology Tool” hosted by Banta-Green and Dr. Daniel Burgard, an associate chemistry professor at University of Puget Sound.
The two researchers, who have published together on the topic, were recently tapped by the federal government to monitor wastewater for levels of cannabis use before and after legalization in Washington.
“This work is probably in what I would call its adolescence. It’s not fully mature,” Banta-Green said. “We’re still learning, there’s still things to tweak and fine-tune, but I do think there is some value now in real-time [analysis.]”
That value includes results that are specific, timely and scalable in clear, often political boundaries covering most of a given population (excluding areas with septic tanks.) You can tell if a large narcotic bust had an impact, if at all, on a community’s rate of drug use, for example, and even determine if new synthetic drugs are present.
However, even wastewater testing doesn’t give a complete picture. There is often missing data, known as censoring, such as when population fluctuates. If the study doesn’t have confidence intervals or error bounds, it isn’t possible to tell if certain drug use is more prevalent in the city versus concentrated in a tourist trap, for instance, such as London. Italian researchers sampled the waste of 5.5 million Londoners in 2005—but that year, the city experienced 24.2 million overnight visits from foreigners. How can you tell which drug-infused urine comes from who?
“You need to bring in this sort of sociology component as well to help interpret those data,” Banta-Green said. “That’s a subtly that is generally lost. It’s important in terms of communicating the results, though, to continue to frame them in the proper context.”
That context includes licit medical uses. When heroin breaks down in the body, it becomes morphine, which is often used legitimately in surgery. How do researchers tell legal morphine from illegal morphine if all that excreta mixes together? One method is also looking for exclusive metabolites of heroin, such as 6-acetylmorphine. It’s a similar situation when looking for benzoylecgonine, a cocaine metabolite, or THC-COOH and 11-OH-THC, metabolites of cannabis. These metabolites are much easier to distinguish than the unchanged chemical.
There are even lawful medical applications for methamphetamine: in an obesity drug called Desoxyn and levomethamphetamine, present in Vick’s vapor inhalers, and known to give false positives on drug tests. Nevertheless, researchers can actually detect how the methamphetamine was manufactured and determine if it is pharmaceutical or not.
“Different manufacturing processes will result in different mixtures of those [methamphetamine] compounds and some of the over-the-counter compounds have more or less of one of those,” Banta-Green said. “Those potentials of the over-the-counter or prescription medication contributions to methamphetamine, if I recall, were way under 1% … that we believe was detectable.”
So, while it may be tricky, scientists can generally tell if you got your opioids from a doctor or not. What about those exotic new psychoactive molecules constantly being introduced to the black market?
According to the United Nation’s 2016 World Drug Report, a total of 644 new drugs have been reported by 102 countries and territories between 2008 and 2015. Wastewater analysis promises to show real-time results for emerging drugs, including novel benzodiazepines, synthetic cannabinoids, synthetic cathinones, opioids, phenethylamines, tryptamines, and other new substances. But finding something like a cutting-edge fentanyl analogue is incredibly complicated.
“It’s very challenging, it’s very data intensive, but there are ways to try to pull out compounds that might be in there, but you still have to sort of have a guess a little bit of what you’re looking for or the apparent structure,” Burgard said.
*
But is any of this ethical? After all, wastewater analysis is basically drug testing without consent. Should we fear a future where ordinary citizens have their toilet effluence regularly monitored?
A study in the scientific journal Addiction found there were no major ethical concerns raised when monitoring large populations’ wastewater. However, the paper’s authors did say it was necessary “to minimize possible adverse consequences in studying smaller populations, such as workers, prisoners and students.”
In other words, it’s not exactly ethical to drug test all the port-a-potties at Electric Daisy Carnival, for instance—although, this type of research is not unheard of. In 2009, a researcher analyzed wastewater at a prison in Catalonia, finding drug use was much lower compared to a nearby town. Thankfully, the prison wasn’t revealed, as that may have encouraged strict policy responses, such as restricting visitor access to reduce smuggling, a form of collective punishment.
Perhaps that’s why a few US cities, out of fear of developing the wrong reputation or attracting unwanted attention, have declined to allow wastewater sampling. If your town gets painted as the meth capitol of the county, what kind of message does that send? Analyzing the waste of poor communities could potentially perpetuate a cycle of stigma. And finally, does this research endanger individual privacy?
The ability to work upstream to find individual drug users is available to law enforcement, if they choose—for now, such a narrow focus is too costly to be worth it, not to mention, as Burgard et al. note, the “feasibility issues of thousands of point source samplers and … the legal status of sewage is unclear, including who owns it.”
In other words, installing drug monitoring filters in everyone’s pipeline isn’t worth the investment—so don’t flush your stash just yet—but that isn’t to say a future in which halfway houses or sole individuals on probation are screened is out of the question, especially as wastewater analysis becomes more routine.
In the meantime, it has been suggested police use wastewater data to “guide decisions at strategic and/or operational levels” or “assess the market share held by criminal groups.”
“The law enforcement community has capacity to do this type of work, if they wanted to, [but] that’s not what we’re doing. And we’re not intersecting with that stakeholder group on this work,” Banta-Green explained, adding that also depends on if researchers are willing to work with law enforcement in the first place. Sometimes scientists decide that they don’t want to give any more information to the police.
Even so, the real question is how this wastewater data is used. In their research, Burgard et al. defined the issue succinctly: “Perhaps the issue of ethics will come down to whether sewage-based data is used for understanding drug epidemiological trends or for handing out punishment.”
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rider420
Ghost in the machine


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Re: The Plan to Test Cities’ Sewage for Drugs Is a New Form of Mass Surveillance [Re: tdubz]
#24034690 - 01/23/17 10:07 PM (7 years, 7 days ago) |
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Who gives a shit? You have to be a little more then just paranoid to think that this will give the narcs a leg up. It reminds me of the cops in Vancouver finding a place where grow op remains were dumped, they tracked hundreds of cars a day but did not have the recourses to follow up on even ten cars a week.
Tons of drugs are traded around the world the narcs know this but have the resources to only catch less then five percent. Knowing how much drugs any city uses is great for pointing out what a failure drug prohibition truly is. And how little the narcs are stopping.
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Kryptos
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Re: The Plan to Test Cities’ Sewage for Drugs Is a New Form of Mass Surveillance [Re: rider420] 1
#24035132 - 01/24/17 04:42 AM (7 years, 6 days ago) |
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I remember reading about this back in 2001, and thinking how great it would be. You could actually plan for medical emergencies ahead of time, you know where medical/rehab resources should be concentrated, and best of all, you get hard data that most of the drug use happens in nice white picket fence households in suburbia, as opposed to where the cops patrol most zealously.
It would take so much work to dig up everyone's yard, that it's not even feasible to use this to catch people. Plus, what if you have roommates? Who do you charge? Can't arrest a household, can you?
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MeyerLanski
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Re: The Plan to Test Cities’ Sewage for Drugs Is a New Form of Mass Surveillance [Re: Kryptos]
#24035414 - 01/24/17 08:50 AM (7 years, 6 days ago) |
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Who cares, the entire system is going to collapse before that "surveillance" endeavor leads to peoples prosecution, let the man play with my poo, its kinda satisfying really!
-------------------- Knowledge is Power
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Call-Me-Bob
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Re: The Plan to Test Cities’ Sewage for Drugs Is a New Form of Mass Surveillance [Re: MeyerLanski]
#24035453 - 01/24/17 09:09 AM (7 years, 6 days ago) |
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Back to long drops??? Everyone with me???
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Call Me Bob
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durian_2008
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Re: The Plan to Test Cities’ Sewage for Drugs Is a New Form of Mass Surveillance [Re: Call-Me-Bob]
#24035671 - 01/24/17 10:27 AM (7 years, 6 days ago) |
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What they do, if they find you are blacked out, or in an altered state, is keep you in the holding "jail" (not, technically "prison") for 12hrs -- without water, warmth, blankets, or sanitation -- until they can arrange a court date.
This may just as well have resulted from a legitimate, medical condition, which they will not be tending.
They will never realistically have a panel, which tests for so many different, synthetic drugs and psychiatric conditions.
So, what is the benefit, to the taxpayer, of finding residues in the sewer.
The purpose of a prison is to farm captives, like heads of cattle, for the subsidies. It serves a numerical purpose, and that is all.
There are entire towns, which run on this single industry. It's all they can do. If ever you get dragged into a jury, your relationship to law enforcement is going to be one of the questions, asked of everyone. This form of makework is a means of social support, for at least 1/3 of prospective jurors -- like the snake eating it's tail.
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LuSiD enthusiast
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Re: The Plan to Test Cities’ Sewage for Drugs Is a New Form of Mass Surveillance [Re: durian_2008] 1
#24035796 - 01/24/17 11:19 AM (7 years, 6 days ago) |
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I wonder what they think when they come across an area witha bunch of kratom eaters.
They would most likely not be testing for it, but there'd be like frakishly huge green hulk shits that they can't avoid.
Now im picturing that scene where the gang takes frank and charlies mystery poop to a scientist to figure out who pooped the bed.
-------------------- I'm addicted to coke, weed, booze, ludes and speed. Not LSD, you can't get addicted to LSD, it was built by scientists. I ain't got no demons that gonna get woke. In erowid we trust. Just take your damn pills and don't ask any questions, you'll be fine.
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durian_2008
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Re: The Plan to Test Cities’ Sewage for Drugs Is a New Form of Mass Surveillance [Re: LuSiD enthusiast]
#24035965 - 01/24/17 12:50 PM (7 years, 6 days ago) |
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Quote:
I wonder what they think when they come across an area witha bunch of kratom eaters.
To answer the question literally, any anomalous symptoms, chemical results, sobriety tests, etc, etc, are recorded as generic "drugs" or "drug-related" on the officer's ledger. It's all painted with a very-broad brush.
They're telling us that they need to dissect the issue, to the nth degree, but all cases are (mis)treated equally.
imhblo, if they see anything which vaguely registers as an opiate, they are not going to care whether it's a legal high, pharm, or street drug.
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Celestial Traveler
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Re: The Plan to Test Cities’ Sewage for Drugs Is a New Form of Mass Surveillance [Re: tdubz]
#24036269 - 01/24/17 02:55 PM (7 years, 6 days ago) |
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Perhaps this is ignorant as I don't know much about biology, but if there were some way to tell which drugs came from who's poo specifically, then that would be a concerning problem.
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LuSiD enthusiast
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Re: The Plan to Test Cities’ Sewage for Drugs Is a New Form of Mass Surveillance [Re: Celestial Traveler]
#24037218 - 01/24/17 08:34 PM (7 years, 6 days ago) |
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Quote:
Celestial Traveler said: Perhaps this is ignorant as I don't know much about biology, but if there were some way to tell which drugs came from who's poo specifically, then that would be a concerning problem.
Well, idk about you but i can spot my poop from a mile away.
Very distinct marbling and a pungent dewey smell is my signature.
-------------------- I'm addicted to coke, weed, booze, ludes and speed. Not LSD, you can't get addicted to LSD, it was built by scientists. I ain't got no demons that gonna get woke. In erowid we trust. Just take your damn pills and don't ask any questions, you'll be fine.
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Amanita86
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Re: The Plan to Test Cities’ Sewage for Drugs Is a New Form of Mass Surveillance [Re: LuSiD enthusiast] 1
#24037474 - 01/24/17 10:35 PM (7 years, 6 days ago) |
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All this sounds like a good way to justify shocking over exaggerated news headlines to further sway soccer mom's into voting for anything anti drug related. They're lining up to win a shitload of votes in their favor for all things surveillance and incriminating law. Those slippery jokesters..
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Orange clock, pencil "They threw me off the hay truck about noon..."
*Mark 15:34  Gam zeh ya’avor...
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keyser_soze
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Re: The Plan to Test Cities’ Sewage for Drugs Is a New Form of Mass Surveillance [Re: Amanita86]
#24039567 - 01/25/17 07:00 PM (7 years, 5 days ago) |
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I have reason to believe this is part of a shadowy information mining strategy for big pharma.
how else can you gauge the territory of your product?
they aren't looking for illegal drugs, they are looking for prescription ones.
-------------------- People in my Fan Club: Masked (President), Ballsalsa (VP), The Ecstatic*don't waste your time "debating" with him, he uses 3rd grader tactics (Director of Bullshit), Koods (Fake News Anchorman), Falcon - Devout Communist *Word your posts carefully if they contain right wing values. The moderators here like to keep it left leaning, they will use every excuse to ban you but not the others. You've been warned.
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thehighking
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Re: The Plan to Test Cities’ Sewage for Drugs Is a New Form of Mass Surveillance [Re: keyser_soze]
#24039995 - 01/25/17 10:33 PM (7 years, 5 days ago) |
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What if everyone flushes their toilet at the same time? Could the cops be washed out of the sewers? Seriously though that seems like a pointless waste of resources
-------------------- "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one" Albert Einstein
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LuSiD enthusiast
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Re: The Plan to Test Cities’ Sewage for Drugs Is a New Form of Mass Surveillance [Re: thehighking]
#24040281 - 01/26/17 01:56 AM (7 years, 5 days ago) |
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Quote:
thehighking said: What if everyone flushes their toilet at the same time? Could the cops be washed out of the sewers? Seriously though that seems like a pointless waste of resources
Might be the shittiest post I've ever read.
If i could i would wipe it from my memory.
Post is a complete turd.
-------------------- I'm addicted to coke, weed, booze, ludes and speed. Not LSD, you can't get addicted to LSD, it was built by scientists. I ain't got no demons that gonna get woke. In erowid we trust. Just take your damn pills and don't ask any questions, you'll be fine.
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durian_2008
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Re: The Plan to Test Cities’ Sewage for Drugs Is a New Form of Mass Surveillance [Re: LuSiD enthusiast]
#24040768 - 01/26/17 09:35 AM (7 years, 4 days ago) |
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It's called Keynesianism, and the waste of resources is intended to keep people occupied.
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Kryptos
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Re: The Plan to Test Cities’ Sewage for Drugs Is a New Form of Mass Surveillance [Re: thehighking]
#24043143 - 01/27/17 08:00 AM (7 years, 3 days ago) |
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Quote:
thehighking said: What if everyone flushes their toilet at the same time? Could the cops be washed out of the sewers? Seriously though that seems like a pointless waste of resources
Sewers can handle that. There was a persistent myth that NY sewer system died when everyone flushed in the 15 minutes after the broadcast of the finale of MASH, but I can't find any truth to it.
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Camwritesgonzo
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Re: The Plan to Test Cities’ Sewage for Drugs Is a New Form of Mass Surveillance [Re: tdubz] 3
#24055832 - 01/31/17 09:19 PM (6 years, 11 months ago) |
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Dude, 20 bucks says they find a shitload of jenkem.
-------------------- "I've always maintained that reality is for those who can't face drugs."-Tom Waits "I feel the same way about disco as I feel about herpes."-Hunter S. Thompson A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
 
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durian_2008
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Re: The Plan to Test Cities’ Sewage for Drugs Is a New Form of Mass Surveillance [Re: Camwritesgonzo]
#24055841 - 01/31/17 09:24 PM (6 years, 11 months ago) |
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How will they know whether you have used it, or not?
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Camwritesgonzo
The Unflushable Stool



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Re: The Plan to Test Cities’ Sewage for Drugs Is a New Form of Mass Surveillance [Re: durian_2008]
#24055861 - 01/31/17 09:36 PM (6 years, 11 months ago) |
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I think their policy is "he who dealt it smelt it."
-------------------- "I've always maintained that reality is for those who can't face drugs."-Tom Waits "I feel the same way about disco as I feel about herpes."-Hunter S. Thompson A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
 
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durian_2008
Cornucopian Eating an Elephant



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Re: The Plan to Test Cities’ Sewage for Drugs Is a New Form of Mass Surveillance [Re: Camwritesgonzo]
#24055867 - 01/31/17 09:39 PM (6 years, 11 months ago) |
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As in dealers.
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durian_2008
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Re: The Plan to Test Cities’ Sewage for Drugs Is a New Form of Mass Surveillance [Re: durian_2008] 1
#24055914 - 01/31/17 10:01 PM (6 years, 11 months ago) |
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Raw sewage is a potential source for drugs, since they are not metabolized, and precursor chemicals.
Reminds me of the soap on Fight Club.
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Camwritesgonzo
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Re: The Plan to Test Cities’ Sewage for Drugs Is a New Form of Mass Surveillance [Re: durian_2008]
#24056136 - 01/31/17 11:51 PM (6 years, 11 months ago) |
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Well, that certainly helps clear up that whole "all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world" line a bit, doesn't it?
-------------------- "I've always maintained that reality is for those who can't face drugs."-Tom Waits "I feel the same way about disco as I feel about herpes."-Hunter S. Thompson A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
 
Edited by Camwritesgonzo (01/31/17 11:52 PM)
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