Buzzwords of 2008. “Caribou Barbie” is pretty funny, though I think the best Palin nickname I heard during the campaign was “Bible Spice.”
This seems like a pretty petulant reaction to Massachusetts’ pot decriminalization bill. Because you can no longer be arrested for possessing small amounts of pot, the state can no long give cops and school bus drivers a drug test? How does that follow?
Vanity plates that slipped by the DMV.
iPhone fart application pulling in $10 grand per day.
Uh-oh.
Flim-flam physician fueled his Ford with patient fat.
Baby elephant + snow.
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on Friday, December 26th, 2008 at 7:50 am by Radley Balko
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TheAgitator.com
Looks like the Dr. that was using patient fat has skipped the country.
Regarding the Massachusetts pot story…i was suprised to see only one comment backing the letter and the rest calling BS. Comment of the day over there… “Since when did a cop get fired for doing something illegal?” Well said.
I have to ask at this point whether the police are capable of engaging in public policy debate without being completely dishonest. The next time I see that happen it will be the first.
I love the stat of 77 people have failed drug tests over the last 3 years at the MBTA. Th MBTA must have 1000 employees minimum (that is a super-conservative estimation), and considering that pot stays in your system for 30 days (or more depending on your weight and body type), the odds of any of those 77 people being high WHILE on the job is probably something like 20% at MOST.
Gee, what with Anton’s belief in the “new professionalism” in law enforcement this story should be a non-starter. Cops, doing illegal things? As we say in Boston - nevaaahhhh!! Now donut testing…
Cell phones cause brain cancer? Whoops!
If you had bothered to read the article you’ll notice that these recent studies are far more comprehensive than those in the past.
So I’m not sure how linking to articles some of which are almost 2 years in the past are supposed to refute a recent study. Or is it you get some joy out of making yourself look stupid?
Speaking of license plates, this one was on my PU for about 5 years- until I recieved a certifed letter demanding that I surrender my plates within 72 hours:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/nmXKWNdKNtOjO-wOOXjQCg?authkey=3zgpkP0UlM0&feat=directlink
I must be getting old…what is UYKCUF?
Flim-flam physician fueled his Ford with patient fat.
Alliteration, Radley? That’s so pedestrian.
Baby elephant in snow - cute. But on the same site: shoplifting dog - priceless. The only thing missing was a cop who felt the need to shoot the dog in the store to prevent the theft of a rawhide bone.
Lee, read it backwards.
You know, on the one hand, the fat was just going to get thrown away anyways, and its good to see it going to good use. On the other hand…..IT’S MADE OF PEOPLE!!!
LOL Salvo:
Soylent Green Gas
I find it laughable that the atty for the Mass Police Chief’s Assoc said, ‘“At this point, it looks like a violation of their rights, and then there’d be a lawsuit and it would cost thousands of dollars,” regarding drug testing. This ignores the HUGE expense the actual tests cost, the intrusive nature of (especially) random drug testing, and how inneffective the tests are at reducing usage. Like radar testers, there’s a game between the companies developing the drug tests and the companies developing products to defeat them.
To me, drug testing has lead the single biggest assault on the 4th amendment over the past 20 years…
Hmm.
The US is the fattest nation…
You can make biodiesel fuel from fat…
(Starts working on business plan)
“Flim-flam physician fueled his Ford with patient fat.”
Hell, Rosie O’Donnell should be good for several hundred miles…
Marty,
How exactly has drug testing in the context of this story assalted the 4th Amendment? Drug testing in the employment context - even when the government is the employer - almost never even implicates the 4th Amendment.
Employee drug testing implicates the 4th in several ways - anytime a public employee is randomly drug tested, it’s a search BY the government without a warrant without probable cause. Any time non-public employees are tested, it is usually because Congress has financially blackmailed the company into being a “drug free workplace” - the 4th again.
“I think the best Palin nickname I heard during the campaign was ‘Bible Spice.’”
Oh shit, that is funny on so many levels. “If you’re gonna be my savior, you gotta git wit my friends.” Thanks for the laugh, Radley.
Nick T-
Susan nailed it.
It’s the whole ’secure in your person’ thing…
tons of abuse documented on urine testing- women have been discretely tested for pregnancy (you wouldn’t want to promote a pregnant chic into that key position, y’know…), there were numerous cases of people with seizure disorders being messed with… false positives have been a huge issue…
I can’t imagine anyone not working for the testing side being in favor of drug testing if they do a little research.
Marty: I can’t imagine anyone not working for the testing side being in favor of drug testing if they do a little research.
True enough.
Not to mention, if a manager/employer has to resort to having an employee urinate into a jar in order to evaluate their job performance, then, IMHO, that person really isn’t qualified to hold a management position in the first place.*
* In the interest of full disclosure, I have fired a couple of people who were stoned while on the job . This was in a high risk environment where split-second decisions literally meant the difference between life and death. And no, I didn’t need a UA to tell me that these kids were too effed-up to perform their tasks safely.
On the other hand, I have been in the position of supervising production line employees in a low-risk environment who were in the habit of toking up during every break. Oddly enough, most of them out-performed their ’straight’ counterparts.
I’m pretty sure that their habit of being more-or-less perpetually stoned enabled them to successfully cope with an incredibly boring job that would have driven anyone with normal intelligence to insanity in short order.
Needless to say, I was more than willing to look the other way in this case.
Why would I want to risk losing some of my best employees by way of making them piss in a jar?
I couldn’t give a rat’s anus if chemical analysis of their urine revealed the use of politically-incorrect substances. So long as they uphold their end of the bargain- ie, that they meet and/or exceed the requirements of their job description- why should I- or anyone else- give a shit?
Burrow Owl-
outstanding post!
With schools around here now drug testing high school students before they get PARKING PERMITS, I think it’s become so entrenched that most people will never realize how intrusive/abusive these tests are.
Just think, in a few years all these students that we do random locker/car/person searches on will be our cops/lawyers/judges. Since they were exposed to the ‘minor inconveniences’ of random urinalysis, dogs sniffing their property, staff searching their book bags and lockers, they probably won’t understand why we object when they feel the need to go through our property/persons. I can’t believe random hard drive searches aren’t being done on laptops to root out child pornography…
#22 Marty: “Just think, in a few years all these students that we do random locker/car/person searches on will be our cops/lawyers/judges…”
Excellent point, Marty. That is why blogs like the Agitator and anti-drug war/pro-civil liberties activism are so crucial at this time. We have to wake up “the kids,” even if their parents have succumbed to rampant paternalism. Cast a wide net and treat everyone like a suspect; that’s a great way to gain the respect and cooperation of the youth!
I attended Catholic schools where they could have searched us all they wanted. For the most part, however, they did not. We didn’t have metal detectors, school police and all that. We had chaplains instead. On a personal note, even though I came of age in an era where searching, drug testing, etc. became commonplace, I never bought into the hyseria. I never accepted these tactics as necessary for public safety. And, as one of those future law enforcement people (possibly) you made reference to, I can gurantee you that my opinions won’t change on these ignorant assaults on individual liberty. Visiting the Agitator regularly and exchanging ideas with good folks helps me to keep in mind that certain principles are more important than employment.
Helmut-
My daughter’s probably starting public high school next year, after 8 years of Catholic schooling. It’s funny, because I agreed to her going to a private school partly because I didn’t want all the dare propaganda and having her subjected to these searches. Well, now the archdiocese in St. Louis is pushing the dare program as hard as the public schools and they’ve started implementing drug testing.
The minute some school bureaucrat tells my kid she’s going to be searched or has my to piss because of some bullshit policy, she’s instructed to call me immediately. MY policy is to make anyone who intrudes on my family miserable. I see my kid as an extension of me, and she’s taught that her behavior is a reflection on the family. If they search her, they’re searching what’s mine. I feel obligated to show her that she doesn’t have to quietly roll over for this stuff.
I agree with you- we’re always looking through this site and being educated every day about how rights are being fought for and against. This is a shining example of what the press is for, in my opinion.
Lets just end this madness right now. I favor pre-natal DNA testing. We have to know beforehand which of our citizens are pre-disposed to be addicts, thieves, child molestors etc.
After a while the sheep will get used to it. Then we can use that same DNA data to determine which people are best suited for which jobs.
I’d put the cellphone story into the same category as reports that scientists have “proved” homeopathy. On the off-chance that it’s not a case of gross misreporting (and I’m hunting through the references as we speak), it’s likely that either the research has methodological flaws or the effect is on the fringe of detection.
Why do I say this? Firstly because, like homeopathy, there’s no remotely plausible mechanism. Second, again like homeopathy, there have been dozens of “cellphone causes cancer” stories over the past decade, and they’ve all turned out to be bollocks.
Thirdly because, even if the risks are statistically significant, you’ll note that the 50% increase is stated as a relative probability rather than an absolute probability. 150% of 0.0001 is still vanishingly small.
Speaking as an actuarial student, this is excellent news. It means we don’t need to start updating our mortality tables again.
The law might have been worded so as to actually make it illegal to require piss tests for MJ. But so what? That testing was never about public safety.
Look, you’ve got tests A and B. Test A is for substance X, the most commonly used (and abused) drug in the world (aside from the non-impairing drugs tobacco and caffeine), Test B is for Y, the second-most common. Test A can be administered by anyone and gives results on the spot. Test B requires sending samples off to a lab and waiting for the results to come back. Test A detects whether someone is intoxicated by X right now. Test B tells whether they used Y sometime in the last 30 days, with no indication of whether it was on or off work.
Finally, substance X is notorious for turning users into belligerent, overconfident assholes, so at the same time there abilities are impaired they are more likely to try something that they normally wouldn’t - and the resulting link to auto accidents and fights is clear. Substance Y is notorious for making users overly mellow and unlikely to try anything. If you haven’t figured out by now that X=alcohol, Test A=breathalyzer, Y=marijuana, and test B = the piss test, go learn something before commenting on drug issues.
So if you’re truly worried about bus drivers driving while impaired, which test would you administer? The one you can give them and know if they’re drunk before you hand them the keys, or the one that will take a week to tell you that they guy smoked some pot last weekend? Show me a work place that uses both tests regularly and I’ll believe that the piss test is for safety - but there is no such work place.
Marty: “I see my kid as an extension of me, and she’s taught that her behavior is a reflection on the family. If they search her, they’re searching what’s mine. I feel obligated to show her that she doesn’t have to quietly roll over for this stuff.”
Well said, Marty. Good post all around. I spoke yesterday about educating the kids, but that doesn’t mean I’m giving up on their parents. Parents need to take a stand, stop believing the lies and propaganda, and stop expecting the police, the schools, and everyone else to raise their kids and keep them safe 100% of the time. It isn’t going to happen people. Don’t let them turn your kids into suspects the moment they show up at school. Thanks for doing your part, Marty.
Loved the number plates! I owned a Triumph Trophy Triple (bike)last century (always wanted to write that!) and went down to the Motor Registry and paid my $120 for the plate “TRI-69″. Bastados refunded my money a week later…
[...] Radley over at The Agitator comes a link everyone shoudl [...]
The whole piss test thing is real simple. When MA made it legal to posess small amounts of MJ, they threw piss tests out the window. The piss test was based on it being illegal to have any trace of MJ in your body, now with the law change that is no longer the case. MJ is now like alcohol, as long as you are not impaired by it while at work, it is no longer any of the employer’s business what you do in your off time.