Sewage Doesn't Lie

[Lemur]

Finally, a reliable method for checking a community's real drug use.

Public health officials may soon be able to flush out more accurate estimates on illegal drug use in communities across the country thanks to screening test described here today at the 234th national meeting of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society. The test doesn’t screen people, it seeks out evidence of illicit drug abuse in drug residues and metabolites excreted in urine and flushed toward municipal sewage treatment plants. ...

Preliminary tests conducted in 10 U.S. cities show the method can simultaneously quantify methamphetamine and metabolites of cocaine and marijuana and legal drugs such as methadone, oxycodone, and ephedrine, according to Aurea Chiaia, a graduate student who is working to refine the process and described details at the ACS meeting.

“Because our method can provide data in real time, we anticipate it might be used to help law officials undertaking surveillance to make intervention or prevention decisions or to decide where to allocate resources,” Chiaia says.

This seems like the best of all solutions; no invasion of privacy, since there's no way to track the sewage back to an individual residence. Certainly, I would worry if law enforcement wanted to monitor homes on a one-by-one basis ... hmm, there is a potential for abuse.

Still, seems a lot more reliable than surveys. What do the Orgahs think?

-edit-

I see both Townhall and Slashdot have picked this story up.