Great:

A minister tested positive for cannabis today at a voluntary session designed to show the capability of a high-tech drugs testing machine.

Edwina Hart, Social Justice Minister at the National Assembly for Wales, had not been using drugs, but the result showed that her hands had been cross contaminated with traces of the substance, from door handles, money or other public areas.

She said: “You could pick it up from any where couldn’t you?”

Conservative Assembly Member William Graham, who had arranged for police to demonstrate the drug testing machine at the Assembly, also tested positive for cannabis.

[...]

Nick Bourne, leader of the Welsh Conservatives, also got a clear result. He later told AMs: “May I pay tribute to the Ion Track system, despite the fact that both the Minister and William Graham tested positive on it – I was relieved that I didn’t – but it is an excellent system nevertheless.”

Ms Hart responded: “It can come out of cash, out of a cashpoint, a beer mat, or anything else. It is a very sophisticated system that can pick up anything if you have been in contact with someone’s jacket or anything.”

It is so sensitive it can detect the equivalent in drugs of a grain of salt in an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

It has been used by Gwent Police to test people queuing for a night club, and to detect traces of drugs in a house where the actual substances have already been removed.

Divisional Crime Prevention Officer PC Simon James said that while the results could not be used as evidence, they can indicate to officers that a person should be searched or questioned.

Mr Graham said: “Anything that deters people from taking drugs is a good thing. If people know this thing exists then they will know that they might get caught.”

This technology is already here in the U.S., and at risk of appearing the Luddite, threatens to make the Fourth Amendment obsolete, or at least more obsolete.

If virtually all of us have traces of some illicit substances on us, then virtually all of us are subject to further searches. Meaning none of us any longer has the the right “to to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause…”

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 19th, 2005 at 8:32 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.