MyDoorsAreOpen
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2003
- Messages
- 8,549
Some recent posts in the Thailand thread in Second Opinion got me thinking about this. Part of our mission here at Bluelight is to reduce the harm drugs cause people by providing education. We may not be here to tell you how to break the law, but we are, and ought to continue to be, a great resource for ways to keep from being a trouble magnet, especially for people planning on traveling to places where they come with no intention of breaking any local laws during their stay.
I think we need to start a comprehensive list of jurisdictions where a civilian, unprovoked and in no suspected or obvious violation of any law, can be forced by law enforcement to submit to drug testing, and face criminal charges if the test turns up illegal drug metabolites, or the person fails to comply. There are actually quite a few places I have heard anecdotal stories about this happening now. In some places it's explicitly within legal bounds to do this. In others LEOs bend the laws to get away with it. In some especially corrupt places, the law may make no mention of the practice, and yet it goes on anyway, and there is nothing a hapless civilian can do about it. But this distinction doesn't matter. All that matters is knowing that if you go to place X, you face a realistic chance of being assaulted with a urine sample cup.
I'll not make any bones about it, it chafes my moral fibers a bit to think that someone can be off their drug of choice for a number of days, be traveling without any contraband, and engaging in no deliberate illegal or antisocial activities in the place they're going, and yet face criminal charges there for something they didn't even do while within the bounds of that jurisdiction, whilst they had no immediate interaction with, or effect on, that jurisdiction's citizenry. This isn't about protecting anyone from anything (if any drug laws are). This is about showing a menacing and intimidating face to would-be drug users in their land, especially would-be foreign drug tourists, at the expense of innocent people.
If you commit aggravated assault or theft, for example, and then you manage to gain entrance to a foreign country, the government of that country doesn't search you for evidence of that crime and arrest and try you in their courts. The most they'll do is hunt you down and extradite you, if they have an extradition treaty with your home country, and your home country has put pressure on them to act on it. They'll also bar you entrance, if your government has tipped them off about your arrival in advance -- likely these days. But I digress. Why should drug violations be any different? I'm aware that in many cases, such drug tests' positive results are in fact evidence of local drug use (and therefore laws broken) in the host jurisdiction. But they're not necessarily, and this important point falls on deaf ears in a lot of places that are rabidly anti-drugs.
The bottom line is, would-be travelers deserve to be informed about the laws of the place they're going, and how they're enforced, so as not to inadvertently put themselves in legal danger. To that end, I propose we open this thread to reports, anecdotal and factually substantiated alike, of people being targeted by any sort of law enforcement officer (police, government agent, border guard, etc.) for a random drug test, while in the jurisdiction legally, out in public, and not under arrest on the suspicion of any crime. Feel free to elaborate on any patterns you notice in the demographic of people targeted, the places they were targeted, the types of officers involved, and anything else notable about their tactics. This will help people planning a trip there to decide whether to amend or cancel their plans, and educate people on how to minimize their chances of being targeted for testing if they end up there with unclean urine after all.
Perhaps when enough of the reports have been backed up with links to credible sources and citations in local legal statutes, we can make a formal FAQ, akin to the one about handling a traffic stop.
I think we need to start a comprehensive list of jurisdictions where a civilian, unprovoked and in no suspected or obvious violation of any law, can be forced by law enforcement to submit to drug testing, and face criminal charges if the test turns up illegal drug metabolites, or the person fails to comply. There are actually quite a few places I have heard anecdotal stories about this happening now. In some places it's explicitly within legal bounds to do this. In others LEOs bend the laws to get away with it. In some especially corrupt places, the law may make no mention of the practice, and yet it goes on anyway, and there is nothing a hapless civilian can do about it. But this distinction doesn't matter. All that matters is knowing that if you go to place X, you face a realistic chance of being assaulted with a urine sample cup.
I'll not make any bones about it, it chafes my moral fibers a bit to think that someone can be off their drug of choice for a number of days, be traveling without any contraband, and engaging in no deliberate illegal or antisocial activities in the place they're going, and yet face criminal charges there for something they didn't even do while within the bounds of that jurisdiction, whilst they had no immediate interaction with, or effect on, that jurisdiction's citizenry. This isn't about protecting anyone from anything (if any drug laws are). This is about showing a menacing and intimidating face to would-be drug users in their land, especially would-be foreign drug tourists, at the expense of innocent people.
If you commit aggravated assault or theft, for example, and then you manage to gain entrance to a foreign country, the government of that country doesn't search you for evidence of that crime and arrest and try you in their courts. The most they'll do is hunt you down and extradite you, if they have an extradition treaty with your home country, and your home country has put pressure on them to act on it. They'll also bar you entrance, if your government has tipped them off about your arrival in advance -- likely these days. But I digress. Why should drug violations be any different? I'm aware that in many cases, such drug tests' positive results are in fact evidence of local drug use (and therefore laws broken) in the host jurisdiction. But they're not necessarily, and this important point falls on deaf ears in a lot of places that are rabidly anti-drugs.
The bottom line is, would-be travelers deserve to be informed about the laws of the place they're going, and how they're enforced, so as not to inadvertently put themselves in legal danger. To that end, I propose we open this thread to reports, anecdotal and factually substantiated alike, of people being targeted by any sort of law enforcement officer (police, government agent, border guard, etc.) for a random drug test, while in the jurisdiction legally, out in public, and not under arrest on the suspicion of any crime. Feel free to elaborate on any patterns you notice in the demographic of people targeted, the places they were targeted, the types of officers involved, and anything else notable about their tactics. This will help people planning a trip there to decide whether to amend or cancel their plans, and educate people on how to minimize their chances of being targeted for testing if they end up there with unclean urine after all.
Perhaps when enough of the reports have been backed up with links to credible sources and citations in local legal statutes, we can make a formal FAQ, akin to the one about handling a traffic stop.