Drug Testing's Liars Part 1: The Shameless Liar

Allow me to introduce you to Susan Ramsden. She's one of Drug Testing's Liars and, believe me, she is shameless.

From “Drug Testing’s NegativeResults” (may require free signup, but it's worth it):

“The drug-testing industry generally treats these reports with scorn. It advises doubters, in effect, to value the drug testers’ experiences on the front lines above dry, abstract studies and, above all, to consider just who is making the arguments against them. Susan Ramsden, a forensic toxicologist who is founder and president of Comprehensive Medical Center, a drug-testing service in Sacramento, California, says that whatever the national statistics happen to show, she does business in what she believes to be the illegal amphetamine production and consumption capital of the world, parts of Northern California. 

"If I go into warehouses, small construction companies or temp agencies that use day labor, we’ll have as high as a 30 percent positive drug rate," Ramsden says. "When I get a call from a business owner, saying, ‘Oh my God, I just was told we have a problem,’ or ‘I’ve just found some drugs,’ I’ve sometimes found 100 percent of his employees positive for amphetamines."

What a liar! You seriously expect me to not only ignore what the actual data shows in favor of your “stories from the front line” anecdotes (after years of spreading false data to promote your dishonest trade and encouraging people to look at “the facts” about drug testing, now you want people to ignore them because the actual facts are starting to emerge), but to believe that you not only found “100 percent of employees” testing positive at all, but that they all test positive for the EXACT SAME DRUG? Despite the fact that the vast majority of illicit drug users are using marijuana and the fact that the majority of positive drug tests are for marijuana, not to mention that there are plenty of other illicit drugs, you expect anyone to believe that your supposed anecdotal 100% result was entirely homogenous?

And THEN you expect us to believe you’ve had that result MULTIPLE TIMES?

Listen, Susie, I know your entire industry has been based on lies, deliberately skewed data, moral panic and public ignorance, but I can't help but feel that you are now being dishonest to yourself, if you can say those things with a straight face and expect anyone to believe you. I know your entire industry is based on ignorance of the facts, but ignorance is not stupidity. You, like the rest of the liars in the drug testing industry, seem to have gotten complacent and seem to have conflated those two ideas (stupidity and ignorance) as if they were interchangable, but they are not. You seem to have forgotten that public support, or at least acceptance, of your industry is based on the public simply not knowing the facts (ignorance) and not based on the public being mindless mouth-breathing simpletons who would stick their head in the toilet if you told them there was magic world of marshmallows in there (stupid). You seem to have forgotten that you have to strike that delicate balance of vague lies based on deliberately skewed data to maintain your scam. You've gotten so careless, thinking yourself untouchable, that you are now bleating obvious untruths that anyone with a modicum of logic could unravel in an instant. (Seriously, I've run your story by various people who all opened their eyes wide in amazement and pronounced your “I've found 100 percent workforce on a single hard drug more than once!” story to be clear, abject bullshit.

Everyone knows that there is exactly ZERO chance that any workforce would turn out 100% positive drug test results, either once or multiple times, and there is exactly ZERO chance that even if it managed to happen even once, against all odds, that every single individual would be getting high on the same substance, and it's even less likely that it would be a hard drug (as hard drug use is directly correlated with having a drug testing program, while MJ users are more prevalent in companies that respect their workers' physical privacy and human rights—and companies that don't drug test also have higher productivity rates, another thing that unbiased—ie: not bought and paid for by your dishonest lying industry—has shown time and time again, not to mention the fact that marijuana use dwarfs all other drug use in this country). Not to mention the fact that a company that had a workforce with 100% addiction rates for hard drugs would not have lasted long enough for you to ply your dark trade on their employees' flesh.  And there is ZERO chance that, even if it happened once against all odds, it would happen more than once, much less the multiple times you so coyly suggest.

And again, I can't emphasize this enough, observe how the drug testing industry has changed its colors in such a way that shows they are a scam and they know it. When they were deliberately skewing the data and cooking the statistics and lying outright in their bought-and-paid-for Marlboro-style “studies” and “research”, they wanted you to pay attention to the so-called “dry abstract studies”--but now that people are becoming aware that all the legitimate research—the actual science—is in fact showing your industry not only doesn't work but actually causes increased rates of hard drug use, you want to try and hand-wave that away and pretend it doesn't matter, because you have “experiences” that totally disprove “whatever the statistics say”. Sure, the accepted statistics only count when they're propping up your fraudulent industry and putting money in your pocket.

And then there is the sheer unmitigated gall that her kind has to say "consider just who is making the arguments against [the drug testing industry]" when this can happen:

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.[ACLU Briefing Paper No. 5: Drug Testing in the Workplace]

You have a lot of nerve to expect us to believe your spin anymore.  You people, you forensic scientist drug testing shills, know you're peddling snake oil and, like Romney in a closed-door meeting of rich American aristocrats feeling he can speak freely, you admit to each other in private what you would never admit to John or Jane American.  I can't think of  a better definition of charlatan than that.

It's true, though.  People need to consider the source.  Only rather than "consider just who is making the arguments against [the drug testing industry]" they need to instead "consider just who is making the arguments IN FAVOR OF [the drug testing industry]".  There, FIFY.  Because the biggest and most damaging falsehoods are coming from evil corporate shills like you, who stand to lose billions if people knew the facts about the Drug War profiteering scam you've been running on our bodies for over thirty years.  Those of us arguing against you are honest, decent, hardworking citizens who value our civil and human rights, including our right to privacy--especially our right to our intimate bodily privacy, and the only thing we stand to gain by arguing against your kind is the restoration of those rights--and what's more, we have the facts on our side.  No amount of demonizing opponents of drug testing as "mindless addicts protecting their illegal habit" is going to save your industry from what is coming, when you have nothing but air-spun untruths to back up your claims.  Air-spun untruths that come from a single disreputable source, at that (purchased "scientific" data).

Look, I’m not “calling” you a con artist per se, but you are certainly using the same techniques that a con artist uses. I am calling you a damned liar though. You, Susan Ramsden, are a liar and a loser, like all your colleagues in the drug testing industry, and your kind is on its way out now that people are starting to see past your lies. Legalization will be the final nail in your industry's coffin, and you know it.  I hope you enjoyed your ill-gotten undeserved and unearned profit and power while it lasted, liar.  You should be ashamed to lie the way you do, and the fact that you don't seem to be ashamed is a testimony to your low character.  Yourkind will not be missed.

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.

More Desperation from the Anti-Legalization Crew

Did you see this joke of a post by Donald Ramsell?  http://wheaton.patch.com/groups/summer/p/medical-marijuana-bill-dangerous-to-illinois-drivers

He is seriously suggesting that marijuana legalization is a danger to drivers.  There is another such illogical individual bleating this uninformed bull about Colorado, but I can’t seem to find the article anymore.  It was one of the big politicians though, and I wonder how much the Drug War profiteering companies such as drug testing companies are paying these guys to say this crap.

The politician is whinging on about the Colorado legalization law endangering drivers for somewhat vague and stupid reasons that seriously sound as if he genuinely believes that outlawing marijuana has prevented everyone from using marijuana, and that now that it’s legal it’s going to spread like wildfire and absolutely everyone will be stoned everywhere they go…even in their car!   Oh noes!

It’s like he doesn’t seem to realize that millions of people are already smoking marijuana and anti-marijuana legislation has been an enormous failure.  It’s as if he doesn’t seem to know a damn thing about history.  I would swear this moron really thinks that Prohibition I actually worked, and for a glorious fourteen years or so the country was blissfully booze-free until the degenerates managed to force through a repealing of the Volstead Act.  And does he realize that even though alcohol is legal, it doesn’t mean people go around drunk day in and day out regardless of the circumstance or environment.  If this idiot really thinks that making an intoxicant legal is going to somehow magically compel all people to start using it at all times, why is he not fighting to restore the Volstead Act and the Eighteenth Amendment, since alcohol abuse actually dwarfs the influence of all illicit drugs combined in both workplace issues and traffic accidents?  Oh, I know—because he probably likes alcohol, and even if he doesn’t I’ll bet the majority of voters do, and for sure some of his corporate payouts are undoubtedly coming straight from alcohol companies, who are prevalent in funding efforts to defeat attempts to legalize marijuana.  The more you know, right?

Then there’s this Donald Ramsell.  He starts off saying that marijuana legalization is popular and supported by a majority of people, and maybe it’s wrong to keep it illegal.  Then he veers off into Bizarro-world as he states that there are no effective tools or measures to determine marijuana intoxication for the purposes of enforcing DUI laws and no real way to create any, so we ought to reconsider legalization for the sake of traffic safety.

WHAT?

You do realize, Donald, that we already have none of those things despite marijuana being illegal and used by millions of citizens who may or may not be driving under the influence?  You do realize that people are no more likely to be driving under the influence of marijuana now than they were before?  You do realize that even if we can’t develop marijuana-specific sobriety tests that we are still no less safe than we were before (especially since people on marijuana tend to be more relaxed and slower, whereas drunk people tend to drive like maniacs and get much angrier—ever hear of someone going on a “marijuana-fueled” rage or killing spree?  Me neither.), and that such an argument is still not a reason to outlaw the use of an essentially harmless plant and, by extension, jettison our civil rights?  You do realize that your argument is a non-argument, intended only as a desperate move to try and recapture the glory days when you could just scare people with illogical boogey-man sound bytes and have the vast majority of ignorant citizens ready to join you in battle and give you whatever you want to fight your precious Drug War, including their own civil liberties?  Do you work for a drug testing company, or are you paid by one in any way to spout this drivel?  Because I don’t believe you when you say you are happy for medical marijuana patients.  You just realize that there is a solid majority in favor of medical marijuana and that at this point arguing against it makes you look like a picture of Ebenezer Scrooge wearing a coat made out of Bambi’s skin and masturbating while eating a live puppy and that tends to turn people off whatever you’re going to say.  Your words are the marijuana legalization version of the notorious “I’m not racist, but…”

Nice try, people.  I’d tell you to try harder, but no one believes the lies in “Reefer Madness” anymore and I don’t know that you could try hard enough to bring those days back at this point.

Desperation from the Anti-Legalization Crew

Check this out: The liars and criminals on the anti-legalization side of this argument, the ones who wish to subvert the will of the people in order to prop up their own undeserved power and privilege—not to mention obscene profit—are trying like hell to neutralize the Colorado marijuana legalization. You should hear the flailing they’re doing. Check this out:
 

The Colorado legislation would create a 15 percent excise tax and 15 percent special sales tax on marijuana. House Republicans are pushing to lower the rate on both taxes to 10 percent.

In this instance, Republicans are aligned with legalization advocates, who worry that a higher tax rate could result in an expanded black market and even rejection at the hands of tax-averse voters in November.

Doesn’t sound too bad, does it? The Republicans want to lower all those taxes so they can help legalization finish passing—or do they? Add this desire to lower the taxes to this:

That’s where the repeal discussion comes in. Diane Carlson of Smart Colorado, an anti-legalization group, argued that voters should be given the option of repealing Amendment 64 in order to avoid budget cuts to other spending priorities, such as K-12 education.

“This just gives the option for voters that if there is not the money to cover the costs, then Amendment 64 should not be implemented,” said Ms. Carlson. “Are we going to shift money from our schools to fund marijuana? That is not what we were promised in the fall.

Do you see what they’re trying to do there? On one hand, they’re trying to lower both the excise tax and the special sales tax on marijuana, to encourage people to vote this in AND in order to prevent an “expanded black market”. On the other hand, they are trying to create a false dichotomy between “marijuana legalization” and “OUR CHILDREN’S SCHOOLS!!!!11!!!” and convince people that to choose marijuana is to rob our children of an education.

So they know this is a battle they can’t win by public opinion anymore, at least not when it’s simply legalization at stake. They know that all their “Reefer Madness” lies and BS are no longer believed and they can no longer fear-monger people into keeping marijuana illegal because the majority of us can see right through their lies now. So they are trying to create a direct link between something that benefits children and the legalization of pot, create an either/or choice between them, and make sure that by keeping the taxes on the marijuana low enough they will be able to simply eradicate the legalization by saying “oh, sorry folks, it turns out we just can’t derive enough revenue from legalization to even fund the costs of implementing legalization, contrary to the pro-legalization claims that by regulating and taxing we could bring in a lot of revenue.” They are trying to neutralize one of the major positive points of the legalization side by pretending to go along with the pro-legalization majority, and they will use that to reverse this legalization victory and, additionally, create the illusion that taxation and regulation won't work--by making it not work, in the same way that they have self-fulfilled their claims of government incompetence by running for office and dismantling the government to the point where it can't function!

Why should any of this be surprising though?  Every bit of the Drug War has been based on lies, skewed data, political posturing, fear-mongering, false dichotomies (either pro-drug testing or pro-drug use, no other possible opinion can exist, right?) and other techniques of con artists and tyrants.  It is to be expected that these contemptible dishonest authoritarians would fall back on something like this when they're losing on their usual fronts--and they are losing, have no doubt of that.

And this talk about that extra 5% of tax could make people disapprove legalization: Are they serious? Do they really think that people who have fought so long and so hard to legalize are going to say “screw it, just make it illegal again” just because of a 5% difference in the taxes that would be involved—that would only affect people buying the marijuana and do not raise taxes on anything else? Are people more likely to buy black market booze and cigarettes just because of the high taxes we’ve placed on them? And the anti-legalization voters are only going to vote down a tax on marijuana if they know that it will lead to marijuana's legalization being repealed, otherwise they'd be fine with taxing the hell out of it--so you know that is making the rounds among the anti-crowd to ensure their "no" votes.

Let's face it.  Making it legal at all is more likely to hurt the black market sales, not expand it, even with a high tax. I know that if I smoked pot, I’d much prefer to get it from a safe regulated source than from the guy on the street corner who might have laced it with any number of things, for example--even if that meant paying a bit more for it. I find it amazing that anyone on the legalization side would seriously think that a 15% tax, rather than a 10% tax, on the legal sale of marijuana is going to tank the law, and I know perfectly well that the Republicans don’t believe it either. They’re just trying to pave the way for the new “Make Your Choice: Marijuana or OUR CHILDREN” campaign against pot.

Seriously, the Republican Party these days is always aligned with all things anti-choice—at least, when it involves the choices of women, minorities, and anyone who isn’t fabulously wealthy. When they align themselves with the forces of actual freedom and American spirit you should take it as a huge, blazing neon sign to look closer and dig deeper because, rest assured, they have some kind of agenda in place to get you to eliminate your own victory.