This is simply jawdropping:
The results of the study are available in the MPP-funded report False Positives Equal False Justice.
This research has quite far-reaching implications when you consider the massive number of drug arrests performed each year based on the results of these inaccurate field tests. With nearly a million marijuana arrests in the U.S. every year, the number of people convicted of marijuana possession who never actually had marijuana is certainly much larger than zero. I'd also like to know what other countries use these tests and what procedures exist to confirm the results before suspects are charged and sentenced.
It's a powerfully disturbing development and yet another reminder that nothing in the war on drugs is what it seems. When you pull back the curtain, every stage in the drug prohibition process is exposed as utterly fraudulent and perverted. Literally nothing that happens in the war on drugs is reliably correct.
I wouldn't have though it possibleâ¦but if we can't even trust police to accurately identify the drugs they're arresting people for, the drug war is somehow even more shockingly stupid and unfair than I thought.
Permission to Reprint: This content is licensed under a modified Creative Commons Attribution license. Content of a purely educational nature in Drug War Chronicle appear courtesy of DRCNet Foundation, unless otherwise noted.
Add new comment