TESTING SEWAGE FOR DRUGS A STINKY IDEA

You cannot simply flush your secrets away.

That is just one of the implications of new research from a team at
Oregon State University. They sampled spoonfuls of sewage water from
10 unnamed U.S. cities and found that "community urinalysis" could be
both practical and useful. The Office of National Drug Control Policy
is interested in the idea as a way to track the spread of drugs or
identify hot communities for certain types of drug problems.

Researchers refuse to say which cities they tested,
only that there were huge differences in levels of amphetamine use
and that the ingredient Americans apparently consume and excrete the
most is caffeine.

Interesting, but troubling, too. Could an entire city be unfairly
branded a drug town because of one cluster of heavy users? How long
before sewage can be isolated by block, street, building, even house?
If a principal suspects a school has a drug problem, can its outflow
be tested? Already, the government monitors the numbers of overseas
calls from certain communities as part of the war on terror. Can the
war on drugs justify monitoring human waste without first telling the humans?

As such testing is refined, it ought to require a search warrant.
Americans should not be expected to just go with the flow on this one