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Via Radley Balko, this one is hard to believe:

A decorated ex-cop who claimed he tested positive for cocaine because he ingested the drug during oral sex with his girlfriend can't have his job back, a Manhattan judge has ruled.

Supreme Court Justice Eileen Rakower last month shot down helicopter pilot Jon Goldin's attempt to overturn his April 2008 dismissal from the NYPD.

Goldin, a 15-year veteran, tested positive for cocaine in October 2006 in a random drug test using hairs from his arm.
...
Goldin's lawsuit said the cocaine in his system was the product of "passive ingestion" from performing oral sex on girlfriend Coreen McCarthy, who, once he tested positive, admitted to him that she was a regular cocaine user. [New York Daily News]

Needless to say, this cocaine-ingested-through-oral-sex line sounds like the laugh-out-loud lame excuse of the century. I'm highly inclined to doubt that such a thing is even remotely possible, but as to the question of whether or not the officer was actually using cocaine, I don’t know what to think. If his colleagues are to be believed, the story on this guy is that he's well known for not doing drugs. Supposedly, he's an "adherent of the 'straight edge' lifestyle that rejects substance use" and everyone knows he doesn't get high:

More than 70 friends went to bat for the ex-cop, saying they had never seen him take even a sip of coffee and that he abstained at bars while others drank booze.

I don't know these people, but I trust them more than I trust the drug test itself, because drug tests are bullshit. They're just not accurate. If a bunch of people come forward complaining that someone got railroaded by a drug test, I'm going to assume that's exactly what happened. It's happened before.

Notwithstanding the absurdity of the officer's crazy oral sex explanation, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he's the innocent victim of a false positive drug test result. If officer Goldin is telling the truth, then it's worth taking a moment to contemplate the irony that a cop who lives by a vehement anti-drug philosophy ended up getting screwed over by one of the numerous fraudulent technologies designed to ruin the lives of drug users.

I wonder what he thinks of the drug war now, after finding himself on the receiving end of its virtually infinite incompetence.

I do not profess to be very smart, nor do I have the ability to understand this "War on Drugs".

Nate Silver at the very cool polling blog FiveThirtyEight has another angle on the growing support for marijuana legalization.

Put simply, the percentage of Americans who've ever tried marijuana is getting bigger. There are steadily fewer voters out there who grew up before the 60's and 70's. Naturally, people who have experience with marijuana are less likely to be fearful of it and support harsh penalties for users.

Interesting. In other words, support for marijuana reform is likely to increase over time regardless of anything we say or do. That doesn't mean we don’t have our work cut out for us, but it's another factor to keep in mind when we run into new obstacles. The fight is exhausting, but time is on our side in a very real way.


from fivethirtyeight.com

I visited Boston this weekend for the Northeast Regional SSDP Conference and was curious to observe that no one was smoking marijuana on the sidewalks. Weird, huh? It's been months now since Massachusetts decriminalized small-time marijuana possession and yet it almost felt as though I wasn't surrounded by hippies in a skunky smoldering ashtray from hell.

Good thing I kept the receipt for that gasmask. This is great news for everyone, especially all the police officials who were genuinely concerned that life in Massachusetts would be at least partially destroyed if the punishment for marijuana was reduced slightly.

Those cops must really be glad that no one listened to them and everything worked out this way, because now we've got the best of both worlds: 1) fewer people have their lives messed up by getting a criminal record for pot, and 2) nobody blows bong hits in your face when you're trying to hail a taxicab.

It's really beautiful to see that the collective goodness of mankind can somehow prevent an intoxicating plant from utterly destroying the world.

This post from Pete Guither made me laugh twice. Just because a story is about drugs doesn’t mean you can get away with mind-blowing factual errors or unnecessary slang. The news is supposed to make people smart, not turn us into morons.

I've posted a couple new items in the Flex Your Rights blog recently that are worth checking out. We've got an awesome site upgrade coming out soon, so I'm trying to get back into the habit of doing at least a couple posts a week.

The focus is on 4th Amendment and police misconduct issues rather than drug policy specifically, but I'd love to see some of you commenting over there if you're interested.