Various police agencies around the country have been engaged in roadside alcohol and drug testing for many years now. But there are some very concerning issues with these drug field tests that the police have used, specifically when it comes to them being used to criminalize people wrongfully.

These drug tests have falsely identified items as contraband in a number of instances.

One mother from Florida had to spend 5 months in jail after she was tested and the instrument wrongfully identified oxycodone. It turns out that the state crime lab later concluded that the test was wrong.

Another man from Minnesota lost 2 months of his life sitting in a cell, after a test wrongfully identified a bag of vitamins he had, suggesting that they were amphetamines.

They aren't the only victims, there are many others.

These tests have produced a great deal of false positives and mistakenly identified many items as some sort of contraband.

And they have been innocent items that you'd probably never suspect, things such as chocolate chip cookies, breath mints, Jolly Ranchers, deodorant, doughnut glaze, flour, tea, and many other common items.

Imagine being locked in a cage for several months, unable to see your loved ones or exercise your freedom, because some tool the police were using, wrongfully identified some cookies you had, to be some sort of contraband.

If these tools are operating with a high error rate, which they seem to be, then the police should cease from using them, rather than risk wrongfully violating someone's personal liberty.

These tools have been used on many occasions to enable the police to carry out wrongful arrests.

Some studies on these drug tests have suggested that the error rate could be somewhere around 1 in 5 or 1 in 3 false positives.

The idea is that these tests are being used, to try and stop some impaired driver from potentially infringing upon the liberty of another (crashing etc). And yet, with their inefficient results these tools are helping the police to do just that; enable them to unjustly infringe upon the liberty of those on the road.

There is lucrative reasoning as to why law enforcement might hope for a positive result, especially since under legislation like civil asset forfeiture rules they can pretty much take whatever they want if they find something (“drugs”).

And this fuels a very interesting problem for the people who these agencies serve rule over. Not only does it benefit them financially to harass those people over victimless crimes, but thanks to these roadside drug tests they've got a tool that can easily enable them to go about doing it.

For the people who are targeted by this sort of injustice, it's going to be the less fortunate who suffer the most. Those who cannot afford the legal help to sort out the problem, or who don't have the immediate funds available to post bail. How many more people have to be wrongfully and unjustly harassed, fined, or jailed?

Pics:
Pixabay
Giphy
pixabay

Sources:
http://www.manningrivertimes.com.au/story/5293196/drivers-test-positive-to-drink-and-drugs/
https://www.livescience.com/60458-marijuana-hair-testing.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/02/26/a-partial-list-of-things-that-field-testing-drug-kits-have-mistakenly-identified-as-contraband/?utm_term=.96d9790591dd
http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2018/03/springfield_patrolman_flunks_t.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2018/03/13/why-are-police-departments-still-using-drug-field-tests/?utm_term=.a713a9a148f3

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