As if the War On Drugs hasn’t caused enough intrusions on civil liberties, now the government wants to test the sewage. And, no, I’m not joking.
If government studies are a reliable guide, about 25,000 residents of Fairfax County — 2.5 percent of its population — have used cocaine in the past year. The same data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health suggest that about 9,000 have partaken within the past 30 days.
Those estimates, based on personal and computer-assisted interviews, rely almost completely on the candor of the respondents. The Bush administration, hoping to someday broaden the government’s knowledge of illegal drug use, is probing the mysteries of Fairfax’s sewage for a clearer picture.
Earlier this month, the county agreed to participate in a White House pilot program to analyze wastewater from communities throughout the Potomac River Basin for the urinary byproducts of cocaine.
“It’s a very strange request,” Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerald E. Connolly (D) said of the White House program. “We’re ready to do anything and everything we can do to eliminate illicit drug use. But I’d want to know a lot more about what this will actually lead to.”
About the only thing I can see this leading to is the Ty-D-Bowl Man being drafted by the DEA.
And even the Federal Government can’t come up with a good reason for this one:
The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy said it is not seeking to single out specific localities. It also is premature, officials said, to conclude that levels of metabolized cocaine in sewage offer a more accurate index of consumption than traditional survey research.
But David Murray, special assistant to national drug czar John P. Walters, said wastewater testing, which has been tried in Europe, “certainly has that potential.”
“We think it will be very, very useful,” Murray said.
Very, very useful in what exactly ?
