News: Police State Style Drug Testing Hits the UK

I dunno if this has been posted b4 (if so delete it plz!)
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Police State Style Drug Testing Hits the UK
Posted: Monday, Dec 30, 2002
Courtesy of Jonty Adderley @ http://www.skrufff.com
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Clubbers and revellers in Staffordshire (Middle England) are being subjected to immediate drug tests as they enter bars and clubs, after local police introduced a new portable computer which instantly analyses swab tests.
“It will allow us to test hundreds of people in a very short time,” Chief Superintendent Nick Lowe told the Daily Telegraph. “If it shows red, which means definite contact with drugs, the police can intimate their powers to stop and search the person and then arrest them if necessary.”
Although young people have every legal right to refuse the intimidating test, police confirmed that a refusal would be considered suspicious, an approach civil liberties campaigner Gareth Crossman from Liberty slammed as ‘extremely questionable.’
“The police cannot force someone who us not under arrest to take a drug test but they are implying they can,” he pointed out.
“To then use a perfectly legitimate refusal to comply as part of a justification for suspicion is an abuse of police powers.”
With cannabis staying in users’ systems for 28 days, marijuana enthusiasts are most likely to be caught by the new police tactic, even though British authorities are reclassifying it to Class C in the New Year. Ironically, infamous cannabis smuggler turned legalisation campaigner/DJ Howard Marks predicted such draconian tactics would only occur if laws were never softened against the hugely popular drug.
“Cannabis can only carry on being illegal forever if the world becomes a horrible Nazi-type police state,” he predicted in a prescient interview in 1998.
“But then people will be more worried about seeing their kids than about getting stoned".
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Hmmm... this is a pretty fucked situation - they're obviously getting sick of being walked all over in the so-called "War On Drugs" and have decided to start playing tougher. Quite frankly I'm unsurprised. It seems to me that for every authority figure who comes out with some absolutely outstanding HM-based policy or advice designed to lower the incidence of health or legal problems related to drugs... there's another 15 who are quite willing to forego all HM principles and human rights to pursue a moral victory.
However, is the 'innocent until proven guilty' ethos dead in the world now? I thought that in general, the police were required to have 'probable cause' (usa- ie believe you were involved in illegal activities at the time) in order to search you. Taking a saliva swab or other sample is indeed a physical search, and therefore the police should have to present some kind of reason for their suspicion in searching you. Simply desiring to enter a bar/club should not be sufficient reason to search you for drugs.
However, drawing a small parallel, I *can* understand the reasons for wanting metal detectors at the entrances to clubs, to keep out weapons that can harm other people. Perhaps the rationale behind this strategy is an attempt to stop people from hurting themselves. On the other hand, perhaps more realistically, it could be a pin-the-users-in-the-corner strategy designed to make it hard for people to find places to buy/use drugs. Then again - how does this system stop the dealer, who has abstained from amphetamines for a week, from walking into a club and selling pills to a bunch of other people who haven't taken pills for a week or two? I guess it will stop the recreational marijuana and cocaine users from getting in. Maybe if they can work out how to definitively and once-and-for-all stop the pill heads from getting into pubs/clubs, they can stop all that eckie shit fucking up the good 'pub vibe'...
BigTrancer

PR, PR, PR!!!!!!!
Another fantastic public relations campaign hey.....this latest move in the 'war-on-drugs' doesn't do a thing save inconvenience the fuck out of recreational users out for a good time. I believe the only thing this will achieve is to slowly but surely redirect party go-ers from the respective clubs where these tests are taking place.
I would love to hear the pub/club owners point of view: "...well, we were pretty happy with the success we had with the club, you know, we were getting hundreds o' people in the joint every weekend. So we thought fuck it, lets get some coppers with drug-testers on the door. True, now we aint got a club, but I think it was worth it..."

the eventual outcome of policies like this, that i can see, is that all it will achieve is push "the scene" further underground......ultimately compromising recreatioinal drug users health. so i wonder who then would become responsible for a possible increase in injuries/deaths due to drugs.....the cops ...the pollies?
so yeah....someone should tell'em that prohibition doesn't work, we just have to look around us to see that, and that harm minimisation/education is the best strategy in the war against drugs....