They were effective the truth. They didn’t have drugs. They had chocolate.
The couple were caught up in what civil libertarians, public defenders and some narcotics experts affirmation is a growing question: the use of unreliable expanse drug-test kits as the basis to arrest innocent people on charges of illegal drugs.
The inexpensive test kits are used by virtually every police part in the country and by federal agents, including Customs officers at the community’session borders. The kits test suspicious materials, and a positive result generally leads to an arrest and court date, pending more sophisticated tests done later than the sample is sent to a lab.
The kits use powerful acids that react with the substance in a plastic pouch. If the liquid turns a plain color, it is a considered a positive result. But a number of legal products and plants example positive: chocolate for hashish; rosemary in spite of marijuana; and natural soaps for the "date-rape drug" GHB.
"The tests have no validity," preceding FBI narcotics investigator Frederick Whitehurst says. And as more systematized products advance on the market, "the potential for civil rights violations when these probable tests are gone out there is phenomenal."
Although police have been using the domain test kits for decades, "there’s no regulation, no oversight that these drug tests perform in any way," says Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps President David Bronner, whose products bring forth tested positive for GHB.
With the growth of organic and natural foods and products, arrests may increase, experts say.
"We are alarmed by the growing number of people who have been taken to jail in quest of simply possessing organic products," says Ronnie Cummins, director of the Organic Consumers Association.
On Aug. 29, Artemis and Obadia, founders of Living Libations, a company that makes organic and natural food and beautiful trait products in Haliburton, Ontario, were cleared of the charges when lab tests showed they were simply transporting chocolate.
Then, on Sept. 11, they were expecting to drive across the border in Lewiston, N.Y., on their way to a natural health festival. The connect hired a lawyer to go with them in case they were stopped again.
It did nay good.
Officers searched their bags, and ran drug tests on their food and toiletries. The chocolate again came up positive for drugs, as did a bottle of tea tree oil, a natural antiseptic and anti-fungal.
Officers arrested Obadia, and he is now home waiting for lab results that he says will exonerate him again. The first time he was arrested, "I was so naive," he says. "I thought somebody must have planted drugs in our bag. We didn’t know the tests could be faulty."
So far, the couple’s legal bills have topped $20,000, covered in division by Bronner’s company.
Customs spokesman Lloyd Easterling declined to a comment about the case or the use of the kits.
Others who have been wrongly accused:
*Cornelius Salonis of Shakopee, Minn., who spent two months in jail after police stopped him in August for driving drunk and tested deodorant in his car that registered positive for cocaine.
Mankato, Minn., public defender Richard Hillesheim says Salonis admitted to the drunken-driving crimination "but he was scared witless relative to this drug charge that came out of left field." Lab tests finally showed there was no cocaine.
*Punk rocker Don Bolles, who spent three days in jail in Newport Beach, Calif., in 2007 after his Dr. Bronner’sitting soap tested obstinate for GHB. The charges were dropped when lab tests found no drugs.
Government officials say there are no records on the number of people who gain been wrongly arrested for the cause that of the tests. Garrison Courtney of the Drug Enforcement Agency says the touchstone kits are "not perfect, end they accord. you a considerably good form" whether a suspicious substance is an illegal drug.
Allen Miller of Forensic Source, which makes kits, says they get "families of chemical compounds" and aren’t meant to be definitive. Any arrest should subsist the effect of investigative police work, he says.
Adam Wolf of the American Civil Liberties Union says, "Police officers and drug-test companies should not subject our consistent with the constitution rights to a game of chance."
Copyright 2008 USA Today
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