Isn't it cute how hypocritical the failure Drug Warriors are?

Well, it would be if they hadn't destroyed so many lives and denied so many people vital medicine.

Politifact verified The Marijuana Policy Project's ad about marijuana being less toxic than alcohol (of course, with a dishonest little qualifier that they're "mostly" right--we've come so far, and yet some idiots still can't bring themselves to admit the pro-legalization side is right even when they're admitting that very thing, so they add little qualifiers to make it sound like it's still one of those "jury's out" deals).

And the dishonest asses at the National Institute on Drug Abuse had a little tantrum.  How delightful.  Go ahead and read the link.  See if you can spot the Drug War hypocrisy.

Yup, the same liars who told us for THIRTY YEARS OR MORE that marijuana was "one of the most dangerous drugs in the world" and insisted over and over that it was totally worse than alcohol AND cigarettes put together....are now saying that to compare alcohol and marijuana is to compare apples to oranges.  And how interesting that this little revelation has come just as a majority of people have seen through their lies and discovered the overwhelming evidence that no, marijuana is not a dangerous drug and yes, it is objectively less toxic and dangerous than alcohol.  How much do you want to bet that if prohibition wasn't on the brink of collapse, marijuana and alcohol would still be totally comparable?

But yes, National Institute on Drug Abuse, marijuana and alcohol do have different effects on people.  And the effects of marijuana have been proven by all unbiased (ie: not paid for/conducted by dishonest Drug War profiteers like you) scientific evidence to be less dangerous than alcohol by a wide margin.  And this was the truth even over the last thirty years or so of this atrocity called the Drug War, while liars like you were lying about marijuana being much more dangerous than alcohol.

Keep whining, by all means.  Keep lying too.  You and your kind are finished and you know it.  Every whining little untruth that comes out of your mouths, every prohibitionist tantrum you throw, is going to make your inevitable destruction more satisfying to those of us on the right side of morality, science, and history.  So keep flapping your lips.  It won't do you any good at this point.

We're going to piss on your grave with great relish--as much relish as you have had making us piss in a cup all these years.  It's only too bad we can't piss on your face too.

Drug War hypocrites are hypocritical

Here's a quick thought about another aspect of drug testing and the failed Drug War:  these wonderful laws that make it illegal to sell any product or information that might "undermine" a workplace drug testing program.  And yet, for some reason, home drug tests are still okay to be sold anywhere, despite the fact that they are most commonly used by drug users to pre-test themselves and their flushing efforts in preparation for a drug test.

Why do you think that is?  Well, it's definitely an outright admission of guilt.  Either they are admitting that the home drug tests are even more inaccurate than the lab-based versions (which is true too) so they don't feel a user would get any help out of it or, supposing for the sake of argument that home drug tests are accurate and reliable, they are admitting that the Drug War at this point is genuinely nothing more than a way to protect certain dishonest Drug War profiteer corporations' financial interests, that this "criminalize all sale of products that could help one pass a drug test" is bullshit in that vein, and that they have no interest, either with the Drug War or with drug testing or with this "protect drug testing's claimed-but-never-proven integrity" law, in actually solving any part of the drug problem.

Because if we eighty-sixed the law-enforcement route and started treating the drug problem like the public health issue it is, and stopped treating users like monsters and treating all citizens as a priori convicted criminals with no recourse against the surveillance state, a lot of authoritarians and authoritarian-propping charlatan businesses would be out of work.

Too bad, I say.  Let them fall.

What the movie "Compliance" tells us about drug testing

Have you seen this “Compliance” movie yet? It’s based on a true story about some creep who would call up various low-wage workplaces, mostly fast-food, pretending to be a cop and got managers (and in this case, the manager’s fiancé) to strip-search female employees, starting off with a claim that a customer was accusing said employee of theft (that she reached into the customer’s purse on the counter and stole money out of it) then claiming that in reality they were “under investigation” regarding “drug crimes”, and that they were simply too busy at that particular employee’s apartment searching for drugs to come and take her into custody and search her themselves. It’s an interesting insight into the mentality of the common person to bend to the commands of authority, almost a live-in-the-wild confirmation of the findings of the Milgram experiment.


I’ve heard people express surprise that anyone could fall for such a ruse or that this could even be real. What surprises me, though, is that this should surprise anyone at all. This is a major flaw in human psychology, as evidenced by Milgram, but it’s also an inevitable result of our failed Drug War and in particular an inevitable result of drug testing culture.


Now be honest, we begin our employment relationship with an employer insult to our integrity and an outright statement of distrust—a direct accusation, in fact an a priori conviction, of criminal activity, of committing a drug crime. Apropos of nothing, with zero cause to suspect you of such behavior, they assume before the fact that you are a drug user and they convict you without evidence or a trial. The employer then insists that you must exonerate yourself of these a priori criminal convictions before they will hire you—not that it will afford you an ounce of trust or respect, of course. And the biggest insult is that to exonerate ourselves, they demand we submit to a highly unreliable and incredibly privacy-invading search and seizure of highly intimate bodily fluids and trust them—devoid of any legal recourse on our part and devoid of any government oversight or regulation of the testing company-- effectively expecting us to afford them a gargantuan amount of trust in response to their overt declaration of distrust toward us. Even as they distrust and disrespect us and tell us so to our faces by asking for a drug test without suspicion, they expect us to trust them to not use our specimen for anything other than the stated purpose and not to, say, screen us for protected conditions like diabetes, pregnancy, or heart problems they don't want on their insurance. And remember, they expect us to trust them absolutely to behave properly even as they receive zero oversight from the law, have zero accountability for their actions regarding drug testing, and can do as they please.


What I'm saying is that drug testing culture has created an automatic master/slave relationship between employer and employee. The employer begins the relationship by demanding a drug test without cause—essentially telling the potential hire that the company is worthy of utmost trust and respect and that the employee is worthy only of distrust, disrespect, and abject contempt, and is little more than a criminal by default until they “prove” themselves innocent of any crime.


This becomes even worse when the company in question commits random drug testing on their employees, because that takes the initial pre-employment drug testing insult and extends it to the entire duration of employment. In that case, you are now perpetually a criminal in the eyes of your employer, deserving of neither trust nor respect, and you must submit your intimate sample to them and trust them with that sample infinitely more than they trust you. And moreover, you will NEVER, as long as you work there, be able to exonerate yourself on any level. No matter how many times you submissively urinate for them, you will always continue to be a convicted criminal subject to invasive search and seizure, you will always be untrustworthy and beneath your company's contempt while your company demands constant godlike trust and infinite surveillance over your body and life as the sole method to ensure that you are being “good”. You will never be exonerated, you will never be worth of trust or respect, you will always be a filthy criminal in the eyes of your employer as long as you work there. It's no wonder that random drug testing causes lower productivity rates. Even people who support drug testing or don't think about it one way or another know subconsciously that these things are true, and it's hard to want to work very hard for an employer who holds you in open contempt and believes your flesh is company property and not your own.


Which brings us to “Compliance” again. Finding a non-drug testing company in Ohio (where the film was set and the original incident occurred) has become like finding a needle in a haystack, and even if you're just saying “do you want fries with that” you're expected to piss on command for the “honor”. Even in companies that don't drug test, the pro-drug testing mentality and culture (and the witch-hunt mentality that goes hand-in-hand with it), there is always knowledge that your employer has that idea that you are probably a drug user, that your employer is being bombarded with drug testing industry propaganda without any challenging points of view to show what a load it is, that your employer is being told the lie that not drug testing means that their entire workforce is made entirely of drug users by definition, that your employer is looking at you cockeyed every day suspecting you of criminal activity because of that propaganda, that adversarial relationship with your employer and the fact that at any moment your company might give in to the evil and jump on the privacy-invading wagon.


So, given those facts, given the high likelihood that this girl was forced by that manager to piss in a cup before being hired, why is it surprising that that manager or any manager would force that employee to strip when ordered to do so by a voice on the phone claiming to have authority over them? And why is it surprising that that employee submitted to that treatment, after having already submitted to a practice that creates an undeniable subconscious understanding that even what you have between your legs is not your own but is corporate property to be searched at the corporation's whim? Few people even know their rights anymore, either regarding the government or their employer. Far from being surprising, the was actually the inevitable result of the mentality of drug testing that has gripped this benighted country throughout the drug war.


Don't believe me? Well, notice that when the manager begins to doubt and ask some questions, what does the police impersonator say? Well, he tells her the “real” reason he's having her strip-search her employee isn't just some random claim of theft from an unidentified customer, it's because she's involved in DRUGS. And at that point, you see the manager's face harden and she no longer has any questions, any doubt, or any mercy or sympathy for her now-naked subordinate. This treatment no longer seems out-of-line or unreasonable—because before she hired this girl, without a single hint that this girl could be involved in drugs, she likely forced this girl to pull down her pants and provide her with an intimate sample from the inside of her body to “prove” she wasn't, so it sounds reasonable to her unreasoning drug-testing culture brain that, having a confirmed conviction by the word of an unverified police officer on the phone, that she should be asked to strip-search this “drug user”. The moment he brought up “we're investigating her for drugs”, she was his pawn and this girl became the clear enemy, deserving of neither dignity nor respect, and as for rights...well, it was well-established in both manager's and employee's minds upon the pre-employment drug test that the employee has no rights, especially where drugs are concerned.


Now think about that. Really consider that.


ALL HE HAD TO DO TO QUELL HER DOUBTS AND SILENCE HER QUESTIONS AND OBTAIN HER TOTAL OBEDIENCE IN EFFECTIVELY RAPING THIS GIRL WAS TO INVOKE THE DRUG BOOGEY-MAN!


That should make your blood run cold. If it doesn't, you are too far gone to see how far gone this country is, and you are part of the problem.

Here is the basic text for four of my planned printable handouts for use in raising awareness about this shady business practice. Any suggestions for additions or wording would be appreciated,as would any suggestions for new concepts! Also, if anyone else has graphic design ability and the resources to do so and would like to help out, I'd be glad to post what you come up with.


Handout 1:


Did you know...?


...98% of all positive drug tests are for marijuana?
...drug testing has never once passed peer review?
...drug testing does not test for impairment or for the presence of the actual drug?
...drug testing does not differentiate between casual use and abuse?
...up to 30% of all positive tests are false and can cost you your job?
...the only studies showing positive benefits for drug testing were conducted and/or paid for by the drug testing industry?
...drug testing has been shown to lower marijuana use while increasing addiction rates to hard drugs?
...drug testing can (and has) been used to screen people for protected health conditions like pregnancy?


Handout 2:


Character: If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear!
TEXT 1: NOT TRUE.
TEXT 2: “ In 1988, the Washington, D.C. Police Department admitted it used urine samples collected for drug tests to screen female employees for pregnancy - without their knowledge or consent. “ --ACLU, Privacy in America: Workplace Drug Testing
TEXT 3: Learn more at enddrugtesting.blogspot.com


Handout 3:
TEXT 1: “Experts concede that the tests are unreliable. At a recent conference, 120 forensic scientists, including some who worked for manufacturers of drug tests, were asked, "Is there anybody who would submit urine for drug testing if his career, reputation, freedom or livelihood depended on it?" Not a single hand was raised.” --ACLU Briefing: Workplace Drug Testing
TEXT 2: If they have no faith in their own product, why should you?
TEXT 3: Learn more at enddrugtesting.blogspot.com


Handout 4:
TEXT 1: Can you really trust your employer to use your specimen honestly?
TEXT 2: “ In 1988, the Washington, D.C. Police Department admitted it used urine samples collected for drug tests to screen female employees for pregnancy - without their knowledge or consent. “ --ACLU, Privacy in America: Workplace Drug Testing
TEXT 3: Learn more at enddrugtesting.blogspot.com

A Modest Proposal regarding Workplace Whipping Programs

It’s already been established up and down that drug testing does not increase productivity—quite the opposite, in fact—but right now I’m going to assume for argument’s sake that it does increase productivity.  Then I would like to ask this question of those who still believe this testing industry lie:  What of it?

Seriously, just because something increases productivity does not mean it is something the boss should be allowed to do.  And to illustrate this, I would like to submit that we should return to the days when employers could use corporal punishment on their employees, ranging from paddlings and canings all the way up to floggings.  Yes, at one point in history this was accepted practice, and I’m not talking about slavery!  There was a time in history where you could cane and/or whip your employees for any number of infractions, including some rather minor ones.  And since the pro-drug testing side is not coming from a position of actual peer-reviewed research and evidence, we’re going to assume that flogging one’s employees will raise their productivity level—because, like drug testing, it is intuitively “true”, isn’t it?  Like drug testing, it just “makes sense” that employees will be much more productive if the consequence for getting a customer complaint or not making their quota or breaking any company rules would be getting a certain number of lashes on their back or their butt rather than just a neutered little verbal or written warning.  That is the spurious evidence-free reasoning that was used (and is still used) to enforce drug testing into the workplace, so it’s fair play to use it for corporate corporal punishment on employees.  In this exercise, we’re not going to test the efficacy of Workplace Whipping programs on productivity or safety, we’re just going to explode them into the workplace using arguments that appeal to common intuitive thought, just like the drug testing industry did in the eighties.

(And don’t get me started on how the drug testing industry deliberately skewed, distorted, and otherwise lied about the “data” they did get by doing this, because I’m not going to derail my own post.  But it’s an interesting history—go to the “Helpful Links” post helpfully linked on the sidebar to read all about it.)

Corporate CEOs, business-owners, managers, lend me your ears!  Imagine how fast your workers could be moving to make your products, stock your shelves, clean your bathrooms, or cook your food with the proper motivation!  Imagine how servile they would be to customers if they knew a displeased customer would result in physical pain and humiliation!  Imagine not only higher productivity but a better safety record, since you could also use this to enforce safety rules and punish anyone who is failing to follow those safe workplace policies!  Imagine how much could get done if your employees were afraid to speak to one another, for fear of a lashing!  Even better than ending their non-productive fraternization, your workers would find it virtually impossible to unionize or organize against you!  And since we’re increasing the power of the employer to govern the employee’s private life outside of work…well, you see where this is going.

And, as with the arguments for allowing employers to drug test their employees, you can also justify it based on the “at-will” employment laws—if you don’t like bending over for a caning for being five minutes late, or talking a little too long with a co-worker, or missing your quota by one piece, or just because your boss doesn’t like your beliefs, politics, or your face, you can always just go to some other employer who doesn’t whip his employees. That is, until they all end up doing it and your level of control is limited to whose hand holds the whip over your shoulders (just as your only control regarding drug testing now is who is holding the cup between your legs as if they own what’s in your pants), because all the companies are being given the scaremongering speech from the whip companies that if they don’t adopt a pro-whipping disciplinary policy then all the “lazy” and “non-productive” workers will hide out in their companies and bleed them dry.  Because the only reason someone could have a problem with being flogged or caned by their boss as a disciplinary measure is if they are lazy, non-productive workers, and there is literally no other reason one might object to such a policy.

Just like anyone who opposes drug testing must, by necessity, be a drug user, because there is absolutely no other logical reason someone would object to handing an employer or potential employer (who is, by right of demanding a no-cause drug test, starting your relationship off with a show of obscene distrust and calling you an a priori criminal) a sampler platter of intimate bodily fluids and be expected to trust them to use those fluids ONLY for the stated purpose despite there being almost no regulations or oversight on such activities* (effectively demanding a greater trust than the one they have denied to you, by the way.)  Just like anyone who is concerned about being observed while providing a sample must by necessity be a user, because there is no possible logical reason anyone could object to having someone squat down and stare at their bare genitalia as they urinate unless they were planning to adulterate the sample, right?  No possible reason to object to that unless you’re a user trying to pull something!  The only thing a Proper Honest Upstanding Non-Drug-Using Citizen would do when told to pull down their pants and display their bare genitals for a total stranger while urinating is to say “Yes, Sir (or Ma’am) and start unzipping those pants!  (What scares me is that so many people have been brainwashed into genuinely thinking this very thing.  This needs to change, and it will.)

And no, you have no leg to stand on trying to say “well, you see, flogging is disfiguring and drug testing isn’t, so you can’t do it” because we don’t have to flog.  We could instead use a paddling or a caning, as mentioned above, which is not disfiguring, any welts or bruises will heal without scarring, and for crying out loud so many benighted individuals support that exact same punishment for errant children and teenagers on the grounds that it’s incredibly effective and totally “not abusive”.  If it's not too abusive for children, then it's not to abusive for adult workers.

So what are we all waiting for?  If productivity is the only argument we need to justify a personal violation of the employee’s body by the employer, reinforced by the “at-will” employment law, why don’t we add the cat o’ nine tails to the specimen jar in our toolbox of employee management?  Let’s adopt workplace whipping policies across the board, and start a “slacker-free workplace”!

Let’s face it, you can’t support drug testing policies and make any serious arguments against workplace whipping policies.  The only reason anyone would try is that they don’t like the idea of being whipped as a disciplinary measure in the workplace but they have been acclimated to the idea of pissing in a cup for an employer after drug testing has been enforced for thirty years and counting.  You’re just used to drug testing and haven’t really given it any serious thought before (unless you’re one of those profiteers who works for the drug testing industry, in which case you’re something else, but this post isn’t about dishonest charlatans like you, so I’ll hold back the stream of abuse.  You’re welcome.)

And I would invite anyone who doubts that I could possibly be a non-user for the above ignorant reasons to imagine they actually live that world they don’t like as described above, a world where nearly every single solitary employer has a Workplace Whipping policy and part of the "Slacker-Free Workplace Program", a world where they can be given a number of  lashes for failing to meet quota at work by any amount or any number of other offenses, where this practice is supported, encouraged, and even taxpayer subsidized by government “Slackers Don’t Work” programs, where all the evidence showing this is a good business practice has been conducted by or paid for by whip and cane companies (or companies that provide whipping and caning services for companies) while all the unbiased evidence showing it to be ineffective and unreliable goes ignored, and where anyone who objects for any reason is immediately considered to be a lazy non-productive worker who is only objecting so they can protect their lifestyle of workplace sloth—and is therefore considered a prime candidate for the whip, regardless of how hard they actually work or how great their actual work record is.

Then you will know my pain.

*From the ACLU link:   "In 1988, the Washington, D.C. Police Department admitted it used urine samples collected for drug tests to screen female employees for pregnancy - without their knowledge or consent."

Drug Testing's Useful Idiots Part 2: The Talisman to Ward Off Drug Evil (ooh!)

Just a short example of what one can expect from the misinformed.  I was subtly expressing my problems with our shiny new workplace no-cause drug testing program and this dim bulb actually said the following:

"Well, what you ought to be afraid of is some meth-head busting in here and shooting up the place for sudafed."

WTF?

If you aren't also facepalming at that comment, you need to learn how to logic.

She seriously seems to believe that I and her and every employee being under constant intimate internal surveillance at all times is somehow going to prevent a meth-head from trying to rob the place for sudafed.  And she said that with a straight face.  Unbelievable.

I'm sure that she, like other pro-drug testing misinformed cowards, doesn't realize that the corporate hose between her legs has zero effect on

1) Who is allowed to enter the store

2) who is allowed to shop at the store

3) who is allowed to attempt to purchase sudafed

4) whether or not the store can be robbed for sudafed or any other reason

For crying out loud, YOU are the one being forced to piss in a cup, honey!  NOT the customers!  Hey, I'm open-minded, but entirely skeptical that you could possibly come up with any way, any mechanism in the process of you or me being drug testing (with or without cause) that could possibly prevent meth-heads from entering the store with a gun for the purposes of armed robbery.

This is one of Drug Testing's Useful Idiot arguments right here:  The "Drug Testing is a Magic Amulet of Protection" claim.  These arguments are advanced by the kind of uninformed and/or misinformed pro-drug testing person who, devoid of any factual information about drug testing and having no idea how the purported "science" behind it is supposed to even work, seems to regard it as a magical talisman that will protect us all by warding off drug users, as if drug testing has magic meth-head repelling powers like a mystical version of OFF, and that no drug user can come within fifty feet of a company with a robust no-cause drug testing program.  These people can get pretty ugly, as cowards will when protecting their security blanket.

Sad, really.  And scary that anyone could be this dense about reality.  Also, contemptible that anyone could be so dismissive of the rights of others in their pursuit of the illusion of safety.

Another expert admits there is no scientific case against medical marijuana!

Another nail in the coffin of the Drug War!  CNN's Sanjay Gupta has changed his mind and now supports medical marijuana, admitting that there is no sound scientific proof against it and much in favor of it!  A quote:

I mistakenly believed the Drug Enforcement Agency listed marijuana as a schedule 1 substance because of sound scientific proof. Surely, they must have quality reasoning as to why marijuana is in the category of the most dangerous drugs that have “no accepted medicinal use and a high potential for abuse.

They didn’t have the science to support that claim, and I now know that when it comes to marijuana neither of those things are true. It doesn’t have a high potential for abuse, and there are very legitimate medical applications. In fact, sometimes marijuana is the only thing that works. - See more at: http://blog.norml.org/2013/08/08/cnns-sanjay-gupta-apologizes-for-past-opposition-delivers-full-throated-defense-of-medical-marijuana/#sthash.jzkPzCa5.dpuf

 They didn't have the science to support that claim, and now I know that when it comes to marijuana neither of those things are true.  It doesn't have a high potential for abuse, and there are very legitimate medical applications.  In fact, sometimes marijuana is the only thing that works. [my emphasis]

They didn’t have the science to support that claim, and I now know that when it comes to marijuana neither of those things are true. It doesn’t have a high potential for abuse, and there are very legitimate medical applications. In fact, sometimes marijuana is the only thing that works. - See more at: http://blog.norml.org/2013/08/08/cnns-sanjay-gupta-apologizes-for-past-opposition-delivers-full-throated-defense-of-medical-marijuana/#sthash.jzkPzCa5.dpuf

They didn’t have the science to support that claim, and I now know that when it comes to marijuana neither of those things are true. It doesn’t have a high potential for abuse, and there are very legitimate medical applications. In fact, sometimes marijuana is the only thing that works. - See more at: http://blog.norml.org/2013/08/08/cnns-sanjay-gupta-apologizes-for-past-opposition-delivers-full-throated-defense-of-medical-marijuana/#sthash.jzkPzCa5.dpuf

They didn’t have the science to support that claim, and I now know that when it comes to marijuana neither of those things are true. It doesn’t have a high potential for abuse, and there are very legitimate medical applications. In fact, sometimes marijuana is the only thing that works. - See more at: http://blog.norml.org/2013/08/08/cnns-sanjay-gupta-apologizes-for-past-opposition-delivers-full-throated-defense-of-medical-marijuana/#sthash.jzkPzCa5.dpuf

They didn’t have the science to support that claim, and I now know that when it comes to marijuana neither of those things are true. It doesn’t have a high potential for abuse, and there are very legitimate medical applications. In fact, sometimes marijuana is the only thing that works. - See more at: http://blog.norml.org/2013/08/08/cnns-sanjay-gupta-apologizes-for-past-opposition-delivers-full-throated-defense-of-medical-marijuana/#sthash.jzkPzCa5.dpuf

They didn’t have the science to support that claim, and I now know that when it comes to marijuana neither of those things are true. It doesn’t have a high potential for abuse, and there are very legitimate medical applications. In fact, sometimes marijuana is the only thing that works. - See more at: http://blog.norml.org/2013/08/08/cnns-sanjay-gupta-apologizes-for-past-opposition-delivers-full-throated-defense-of-medical-marijuana/#sthash.jzkPzCa5.dpuf

They didn’t have the science to support that claim, and I now know that when it comes to marijuana neither of those things are true. It doesn’t have a high potential for abuse, and there are very legitimate medical applications. In fact, sometimes marijuana is the only thing that works. - See more at: http://blog.norml.org/2013/08/08/cnns-sanjay-gupta-apologizes-for-past-opposition-delivers-full-throated-defense-of-medical-marijuana/#sthash.jzkPzCa5.dpuf

They didn’t have the science to support that claim, and I now know that when it comes to marijuana neither of those things are true. It doesn’t have a high potential for abuse, and there are very legitimate medical applications. In fact, sometimes marijuana is the only thing that works.
- See more at: http://blog.norml.org/2013/08/08/cnns-sanjay-gupta-apologizes-for-past-opposition-delivers-full-throated-defense-of-medical-marijuana/#sthash.jzkPzCa5.dpuf

I mistakenly believed the Drug Enforcement Agency listed marijuana as a schedule 1 substance because of sound scientific proof. Surely, they must have quality reasoning as to why marijuana is in the category of the most dangerous drugs that have “no accepted medicinal use and a high potential for abuse.”
They didn’t have the science to support that claim, and I now know that when it comes to marijuana neither of those things are true. It doesn’t have a high potential for abuse, and there are very legitimate medical applications. In fact, sometimes marijuana is the only thing that works.
- See more at: http://blog.norml.org/2013/08/08/cnns-sanjay-gupta-apologizes-for-past-opposition-delivers-full-throated-defense-of-medical-marijuana/#sthash.jzkPzCa5.dpuf

 Those bolded lines are particularly important, because they also apply to the practice of drug testing.  Drug testing has not only never been tested for efficacy but has never once passed peer review, and yet people assume that "they must have quality reasoning...and science to support".  Few have ever given the practice of drug testing the scrutiny it should have had, and once it was forced in based entirely on social spin playing on moral panic and ignorance about the drug problem people simply came to assume that it was a "good thing" and that there must be "something" to it if it's so commonly done.  They assume that it keeps drug users out of the workplace despite the fact that all unbiased studies show that it has no effect on workplace safety or the ability of drug users to find employment.  They assume that it is accurate when false positives happen up to 30% of the time, to the point where drug testing companies can make fraudulent claims of "100% accuracy" with impunity.

I look forward to the day when drug testing companies, like the rest of the Drug War profiteers, can be brought up on charges of fraud, as they should have been in the eighties.  Yes, you heard me, I said fraud.  What else do you call it when they tell employers that their service, which has never once passed peer review, is "considered 100% accurate", as my company's suspicion-less drug testing policy claims?  What do you call it when drug testing companies tell employers that drug testing their employees not only will improve workplace safety and productivity, knowing that such claims have been entirely debunked by all studies not conducted by or funded by your industry, but that there is absolutely zero chance that they will terminate any non-users based on a false positive, when they know perfectly well that independent non-industry studies have shown that false positives happen 10% and often as much as 30% of the time?  When you make a claim you know is false and is supported by no unbiased evidence, only your own personal insistence that it's "totes scientific", that is commonly known as fraud. In a just world, it would be considered false advertising at the very least, which is also actionable but in my opinion far too lenient a charge for an industry that has been deliberately lying about their product for at least thirty years to date, not only taking money for value they don't deliver but destroying the lives of innocent people who lost their jobs, livelihood, and reputations (and in some cases, their freedom) due to false positives.

Unfortunately, it isn't likely they'd ever be charged with fraud or false advertising or anything at all.  Rich criminals always get away with their crimes, no matter how many lives they ruin.  I don't know why they're so damned scared when all they stand to lose is their obscene unearned profit and will never be charged with the crimes they've committed, like any of us poor violated stiffs would be if we pulled a fraction of the crap they've pulled over thirty years.

I guess laws are for the little people like us, huh?  Except laws like the Fourth Amendment, of course.

I mistakenly believed the Drug Enforcement Agency listed marijuana as a schedule 1 substance because of sound scientific proof. Surely, they must have quality reasoning as to why marijuana is in the category of the most dangerous drugs that have “no accepted medicinal use and a high potential for abuse.”
They didn’t have the science to support that claim, and I now know that when it comes to marijuana neither of those things are true. It doesn’t have a high potential for abuse, and there are very legitimate medical applications. In fact, sometimes marijuana is the only thing that works.
- See more at: http://blog.norml.org/2013/08/08/cnns-sanjay-gupta-apologizes-for-past-opposition-delivers-full-throated-defense-of-medical-marijuana/#sthash.jzkPzCa5.dpuf

I mistakenly believed the Drug Enforcement Agency listed marijuana as a schedule 1 substance because of sound scientific proof. Surely, they must have quality reasoning as to why marijuana is in the category of the most dangerous drugs that have “no accepted medicinal use and a high potential for abuse.”
They didn’t have the science to support that claim, and I now know that when it comes to marijuana neither of those things are true. It doesn’t have a high potential for abuse, and there are very legitimate medical applications. In fact, sometimes marijuana is the only thing that works.
- See more at: http://blog.norml.org/2013/08/08/cnns-sanjay-gupta-apologizes-for-past-opposition-delivers-full-throated-defense-of-medical-marijuana/#sthash.jzkPzCa5.dpuf

I mistakenly believed the Drug Enforcement Agency listed marijuana as a schedule 1 substance because of sound scientific proof. Surely, they must have quality reasoning as to why marijuana is in the category of the most dangerous drugs that have “no accepted medicinal use and a high potential for abuse.”
They didn’t have the science to support that claim, and I now know that when it comes to marijuana neither of those things are true. It doesn’t have a high potential for abuse, and there are very legitimate medical applications. In fact, sometimes marijuana is the only thing that works.
- See more at: http://blog.norml.org/2013/08/08/cnns-sanjay-gupta-apologizes-for-past-opposition-delivers-full-throated-defense-of-medical-marijuana/#sthash.jzkPzCa5.dpuf

Drug Testing’s Useful Idiots Part 1: The Two Kinds of Drug-Testing Supporter

It’s fairly well-established by all unbiased sources that drug testing is unreliable, inaccurate, and completely ineffective—so why do some people still support it and want to expand it?  Well, in my experience I have noticed that there are precisely two kinds of people who support or accept the drug-testing culture:  the uninformed and the invested (with some mild overlap, of course).

The Uninformed

While these can be companies that have uncritically bought the dishonest sales pitch from drug testing company reps (one area of overlap), this group is mostly composed of ordinary citizens who simply assume that drug testing works to keep them safe from the “bad guys”.  These people range from the apathetic who simply accept it because they’ve never thought about it one way or another to the cowardly who actively support it and want to expand it until everyone is forced to submit to it on every level of society because it makes them “feel” safer.

The former group can be easier to talk to, as they have never given it much thought.  Often, these are younger people who have grown up in this corrupt system and have never known anything different.  To them, everyone has always had to piss in a cup to eat, and it’s just “the way things work”, right?  WRONG!  Of course, this albeit uninformed younger generation is also the most likely to support marijuana legalization and oppose the Drug War, and so tends to be more open to arguments against the various failed methods of the failed Drug War as well as opposed to things like government spying programs.  Simply explain to them how drug testing works and why it is inaccurate and unreliable, and once they are informed about the other side of the equation (the side that has been systematically silenced since the eighties by Drug War profiteers and their witch-hunt techniques) they tend to agree with you.

That second group, the active cowards, is where overlap seems to occur most.  These people tend to be more misinformed than uninformed, and they have embraced that misinformation because of their inherent cowardice and authoritarianism.  They have bought into the Reefer Madness lie and live in constant fear of the “scary addicts”.  They don’t want to hear about how drug testing doesn’t work, or how addiction actually works or why “law and order” police state “solutions” can not, have not, and will never work against a problem like addiction.  They may often get angry enough at times to assault you or try to get you fired because stripping the civil rights from every human being makes them “feel” safe, and how dare you undermine their security theater blanket like that?  These people tend to lack any logic or common sense regarding the issue as well, and will make arguments that are either long debunked or completely baffling.  As far as they are concerned, promoting a corporate police state on every single citizen is their heroic duty, they are heroes for forcing you to submit to drug testing and you are a detriment to society for arguing against it.

As such, these people also have an investment in drug testing culture and in promoting the Drug War, because to admit to the facts that show they are wrong and have always been wrong…well, they not only lose their security theater blanket and the warm fuzzy comforting illusion of safety, they also lose their self-image of being American Heroes fighting the Evil Drug Addicts and the ability to aggrandize themselves by looking down on people with addictions as inferior monsters who deserve imprisonment and death, rather than as the average people with a disease that needs to be treated like the public health issue it is.  They lose their false sense  of security AND their ability to see themselves as superior to other people by default, and to keep that they don’t care how many people’s lives are ruined.  For that they would kill someone like myself for having the temerity to speak the truth on the subject.

The Invested

This group is primarily composed of corporate entities—both the companies that directly profit from drug testing programs (such as drug testing companies, drug rehab clinics, etc.) and companies that indirectly profit from drug testing programs (insurance companies that want to screen out potential hires with inconvenient albeit protected health problems, companies that realize they are getting massive tax breaks and government subsidies on insurance for forcing tax-deductible drug tests on their employees).   There are also government entities that value the ability to spy on American citizens internally and externally without cause who have been working for some time to find loopholes by which they can circumvent the Bill of Rights, as well as individuals who work for any of these companies and so earn their bread and butter by violating the flesh of their fellow citizens and have every motivation to keep drug testing alive as long as possible for their own job security.

Needless to say, the people in this group will lie, cheat, and do anything in their considerable power to keep this going, and there is no use in trying to make them see reason because all they care about is their own selfish interests.  They don’t care about the rights or wrongs of it , so long as the dollars keep falling into their pockets.  Don’t believe me?  Maybe you’ll believe the ACLU in their briefing on Workplace Drug Testing http://www.lectlaw.com/files/emp02.htm:

“The drug screens used by most companies are not reliable. These tests yield false positive results at least 10 percent, and possibly as much as 30 percent, of the time. Experts concede that the tests are unreliable. At a recent conference, 120 forensic scientists, including some who worked for manufacturers of drug tests, were asked, "Is there anybody who would submit urine for drug testing if his career, reputation, freedom or livelihood depended on it?" Not a single hand was raised.”

Do you see that?  When talking to people like you or I, they would tell you all about how totally great this practice is and how totally reliable it is and how no one should have any qualms about submitting a sampler platter of intimate bodily fluids to their employer or anyone else for drug testing, but when it’s just them….well, you see what happens.  These people know they are running what is at the very least a product with little to no value and at most an outright scam trade.  They simply do not care about right or wrong, only about profit.  They forced their untested and unproven product on a frightened and ignorant America in a moral panic based on deliberately skewed data, and they continue in that same vein today using the same dishonest arguments and, yes, the same methods. (See “Drug Testing: A Bad Investment” and “Your Analysis is Faulty (How to lie with drug statistics” in the post  “Anti-Drug Testing Facts: A Helpful List of Links to Help You Fight” on this blog, tagged “tools and resources”).  Only now they ride on a different kind of misinformation, the self-misinformation wherein people assume that the drug testing companies must be so much more accurate now after all this time—an assumption that only makes sense if you are already uninformed or have bought into the drug testing proponents’ original misinformation.

In reality, they are no better now than they were before, and why should they be?  When you’re riding on public ignorance, moral panic, and deliberately skewed data, why would you actually improve your product?  By the time people realize it’s inaccurate and unreliable they’ll simply assume that after thirty years of forcing everyone to piss in a cup there surely have to have been important improvements, and they can ride on that new misinformed assumption to profit further.  Better yet if you can keep people like me silent about the facts out of fear and convince the uninformed and misinformed that any opposition to drug testing is an admission of addiction and that there is no other possible reason someone might oppose drug testing—and since you’re the only game in town to prove that true or false, you’re set!  You can just make sure that any employees who are sent for drug testing because they vocally opposed drug testing get a positive result regardless of whether they actually use, thereby discrediting them as addicts who are simply trying to protect their addiction!  Mark my words, when marijuana is inevitably legalized, the Drug War is inevitably dismantled, and drug testing is inevitably compromised and eventually eliminated, there will be a lot of facts coming to light about the drug testing industries many crimes.  And they know it, and they’re running scared now that we’re at the tipping point with medical marijuana and jumped two states in at once for total legalization.

Most of the overlap in this group is in the aforementioned uninformed and misinformed companies that have uncritically assumed that the drug testing sales pitch was kosher without making any actual attempt to find out any facts outside of that bubble.  Unfortunately, these companies also tend to get invested just like that second group of the uninformed, the cowards, either because they cannot lose face and admit they were wrong to start drug testing their employees and potential hires or because they learn of how much they can clean up in government subsidies and tax breaks, at which point they fall firmly into the “invested” bin and can no longer see reason or facts for the money that is falling into their laps.

So there you have the two kinds of people who accept and support drug testing.  I hope my understanding here can shed some light on how these people think, and perhaps it can help some of you out there in your dealings with these benighted individuals.

Framing the Issue

One last short post before my hiatus, on framing.  The problem of drug testing has always been that the drug testing companies took advantage of a time of mass hysteria, where most people still believed the lies about drug addiction, and mass public cowardice wherein the majority was panicked enough to invite any method of control, even if it didn't work and invited massive civil rights violations.  They used this atmosphere of ignorance and fear and tribal emotionalism to not only spread their lies, but to frame the issue this way: 

"If you don't support drug testing, you are supporting the use of drugs.  Only dangerous stoners looking to protect their habit would oppose drug testing."

They did this so that those of use pointing out the valid reasons against it would be silenced.  This is a technique of witch-hunters throughout time:  frame the issue so that anyone who has concerns, objections, or even questions our methods will find themselves on the rack.  It's the technique of con-artists.  They have ensured that you and I and all of us who know the truth of what they're pulling will not be able to speak out and raise awareness of their dishonesty, and those who only have suspicions that this is ineffective BS, in the absence of the very logical and peer-review supported opposing arguments, will leap to support drug testing for fear of being seen as being pro-drug use or even be pre-convicted as a drug user themselves.  It's kept them in business since the eighties, creating an increasingly hostile environment for anyone who dares to raise awareness of the facts, to the point where some people simply refuse to even hear the facts for fear of being convinced and being accused of drug use too.  To this day, there are people who are absolutely sure I'm a hopeless stoner because of my strong stance against drug testing, and they have closed their ears to the fact that I am the most homebody white-bread girl in the world who doesn't even smoke or drink, much less the fact that I actually have valid points that are backed up by independent study or that drug testing has yet to pass peer review, the gold standard of science.  All they hear is "I wanna get stoned, and drug testing won't let me, wah!"  The drug testing companies have programmed the American people to believe this false dichotomy.

Nothing could be further from the truth, but even now many people assume that if you don't agree with drug testing you must either be high or you just "don't understand" how serious drug addiction is, and the drug testing companies clean up on this.  The fact is that those of use who oppose drug testing have a myriad of valid reasons that have never been successfully contradicted*, and we do understand drug addiction more than anyone.   We understand it so well that we know that drug testing is not the way to handle it--it's ineffective, inaccurate (despite the industry's lies), unreliable, and actually exacerbates the problem (for example, by prodding harmless marijuana users into harder drugs with narrow detection times).  Drug testing is a law enforcement tool, and law enforcement is 1) not the place of employers to enact on their employees private lives and bodies and 2) completely useless in fighting the problem of drug addiction.

So how do we fight drug addiction?  The same way that Portugal has done it:  treat it like a public health issue, decriminalize everything, and take the money out of law enforcement and pour it into free and effective rehabilitation for anyone who volunteers for it.  And this method has at least halved their addiction rates in ten years, and it's still getting better!  You see, one hand the Drug War stooges are emphasizing how serious, say, cocaine addiction is and how it requires medical attention to quit, and then they pretend that this same person is going to "just stop" using because their employer is doing random testing.  But if you eliminate the felonies against someone with a physical addiction and then give them a legitimate road out of addiction...amazingly enough, most of them flock down that road!

So don't listen to the drug testing companies, who would have us believe that to oppose their unethical and ineffective practice is tantamount to supporting drug use.  Let's start turning this around on them.

"To oppose drug testing is not equivalent to supporting drug use.  To oppose drug testing is to understand how addiction actually works in real life.  To oppose drug testing is to support reality and to support real solutions based on fact and evidence and to treat the drug problem as the public health issue it is."

The time is right to start turning this around.  The majority of the public is turning against the failed Drug War, and this could be our chance to neutralize the drug testing industry's harmful and dishonest framing of the issue.  I personally will not rest until every drug testing company is out of business forever.

Don't believe it can happen?  That's what the Drug Warriors said about marijuana legalization.  Remember the snide jokes about the "lost cause" of legalization proponents, all the hateful ignorant sneers and jibes for decades?  Now look at the fear in their eyes and the tantrums they're throwing in the face of their inevitable loss!  Marijuana accounts for 98% of all positive results, so they know they're finished once it's legalized (with all the other drugs being used in such minority and having such a narrow needle-in-a-haystack detection time, it will have to be recognized as the useless security theater blanket it is), and once we start hitting 25 medical marijuana states it's all downhill from there.

So keep your chin up, friends, and stand your ground!  Face the storm of their extinction burst with pride!  They're losing, and they know it.  We will win!

*Not that the drug testing companies haven't tried, but the only studies supporting them are the ones they conducted or funded themselves, so their arguments have all the credibility of Marlboro's "studies" that cigarette smoke is as healthy for you as oxygen.