Daily Archives: December 19, 2016

Wastewater testing for drug use

90s-cartoon-drug-addicts-3-utopiasilver-com[utopiasilver.com]

### NZ Herald Online 12:38 PM Monday Dec 19, 2016
Police to start testing wastewater in NZ for drug use
Police are about to start testing wastewater in Auckland and Christchurch, to get a better idea of drug use in the community. Similar testing in Perth has found 31.6kg of meth was consumed in the city area each week, that’s 1.6 tonnes a year. Now police want to do the same here.
The testing, which will look for methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, alpha PVP, MDMA and Creatinine, will take place in Christchurch and Auckland’s Rosedale treatment plants. Police say the results, which cannot be traced to individuals, will improve their understating of drug use in the population.
Assistant Commissioner Bill Searle … said the results will also inform treatment and enforcement strategies, allow comparison with international data, measure the effectiveness of education and enforcement and provide intelligence data … The testing will be undertaken by the Institute of Environmental Science and Research for one week each month for a year.
Read more

****

NBC News: Shocking mugshots reveal toll of drug abuse
Updated 2/25/2011 6:29:15 PM ET
In-your-face photos aim to scare teens straight by striking their vanity.
The pairs of mug shots, which graphically display the damage drugs can do to the face, were collected by the sheriff’s office in Multnomah County, Ore. Faces that were normal — even attractive — in initial photos, shot when addicts were first arrested, metamorphose over years, and sometimes just months, into gaunt, pitted, even toothless wrecks. Link

****

‘Everyone experiments at college or school and I want From Drugs to Mugs to show kids that everyone in those pictures started on cannabis, they didn’t just dive head first into heroin.’ –Deputy Bret King, Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office, Oregon.

Daily Mail (Australia): The horror of Meth: Before-and-after pictures reveal shocking transformation in faces of users hooked on deadly drug
Published: 02:12 +11:00, 7 Dec 2012 | Updated: 06:53 +11:00, 7 Dec 2012
A new anti-drug advertisement shows the devastating physical transformation addicts experience after years of meth use. The photos, that show a shocking Dorian Gray-like deterioration, were compiled from mug shots of drug users that were arrested repeatedly over the years. The continued drug use caused horrific damage to the drug users’ skin with sores and scarring – that can be caused by uncontrollable scratching during a hallucination when the addict imagines bugs are crawling under their skin. Link

Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

This post is offered in the public interest.

2 Comments

Filed under Business, Crime, Democracy, Economics, Education, Geography, Health, Innovation, Inspiration, Leading edge, Media, New Zealand, People, Police, Public interest