Estimating Community Drug Abuse by Wastewater Analysis | Hacker News Reader

Estimating Community Drug Abuse by Wastewater Analysis

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

62 pointsashitlerferad41 comments

Every monitoring system eventually is used for social control, despite the best intentions of the creators. This is as true in the "public" domain as it is in the private workplace.

In this instance we will soon hear a hue & cry for monitoring of the drug levels in public waterways and sewers. To ensure no crime goes unpunished, that will be followed by the creation and use of systems that track drug use to the individual household (if such systems don't already exist). The information from such systems will be handed over to law enforcement et al, who will use it the same way they use all other information from monitoring devices.

As the ACLU predicted years ago, this information will be shared with 3rd parties to the degree that, should you order take-out pizza with cheese, you will receive an e-mail warning from your insurance company that your premium may increase if you don't control your diet better.

Now, by monitoring your sewer (indeed all your inputs and outputs), your insurance company (and others) can ensure that you don't make that cheese or that pizza yourself on the sly. There is no escape.

> every monitoring system eventually is used for social control

That statement, even if true, does not specify what time frame "eventually" is, to what degree the "control" is, or whether the result is a net benefit to civil liberties. Perhaps the control is in the form of reducing violence, which increases liberty. There's always a trade-off.

Were such systems widespread (and known), people would be pissing and shitting out in the streets. Or you could move to an undeveloped country lacking such infrastructure and encounter more of that same. Interesting case of blowback.

Of course people living off the grid will be quite content with their composting toilets, reminding us that they were right all along.

This isn't estimating drug abuse, it's estimating drug use. Wastewater measurements alone are not enough to determine how much of that use is harmful.

It's all harmful, baby. Now show us the funding!

-DEA

*unless it's prescribed by a doctor for "back pain", then heroin is a-ok!

Back pain can't get bad enough to need that kind of treatment. Don't you know we're in the middle of a Opioid Epidemic that's killing white children?

So how much cocaine or heroine is non-harmful? I would even say cannabis is also shown to be harmful cognitively unless someone stops for 4 weeks but I digress.

Every drug has its physical costs. Some more than others. Alcohol, for instance, has no non-harmful dose-- even one glass of wine with dinner is bad for your body-- but many people drink throughout their long healthy lives.

That said, "harmful" drug use in this case likely refers to exceptional harm, perhaps including addiction or overdose.

You can be given, essentially, heroin at the hospital if in extreme pain. Would you consider this to be "non-harmful"? I would.

How do you define "non-harmful"?

I've known a number of senior executives in well known tech companies who are regular users (weekend partiers) of a number of drugs ranging from marijuana to cocaine, heroin and LSD. They are fortunate enough to have enough income to buy quality product, not cut with harmful chemicals.

Given that they lead very successful lives, I think the drug use is not harmful to them currently. Perhaps as they age out of their 40's and 50's the drug use will become more of a burden on their bodies, but there are certainly lots of lifestyle choices that are harmful to one's health that don't include any drugs at all.

Socially and relationships are in serious trouble. If you measure success as in performing in business and don't count the family and children then okay. Drugs harm relationships. Its proven.

People on drugs are emotionally numb and a emotionally numb people make horrible friends and parents. http://cascw.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/SubstanceAbu...

Best I have seen or heard on the effects of drugs on relationships. This is from "Liberal" This American Life.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/524/i...

The article you linked to is talking about "Substance abuse", but there's a big difference between drug use and drug abuse.

I know many drug users (some legal, some not), but only know of one person who has had a substance abuse problem, and his problem was with alcohol.

I don't know how much cocaine, heroin, or cannabis use is non-harmful, but the amount is certainly larger than none for all three drugs.

About cannabis, you would say that based on what?

Multiple of research studies. The long term harm has been ruled out but short term of days and weeks is shown in multiple of studies in regards to harm to cognitive and memory.

What about in relation to population density in a given area and estimated water use per person?

It can't distinguish low use by everybody vs. heavy use by a few. And some people may be harmed by low use, while others may be unharmed by heavy use.

It doesn't have to distinguish, because there's a rather predictable relationship between total use and heavy use - the usual old "pareto principle". Similarly, total use is a very good proxy for harms.

> The social and medical problems of drug abuse are a matter of increasing global concern.

citation needed

Frankly I don't think people take enough drugs. We could do with a few more open minds instead of the horrific mess the squares have got us into.

I think this argument needs to get more granular.

With our newfound increased ability to look under the hood of the brain with things like fMRI, the research is getting pretty clear that there are few activites in life more irrational than compulsive use of certain types of drugs. Drugs that down-regulate brain systems, like amphetamine, cocaine, opiates or benzodiazepines.

In those cases, what goes up must come down, and you end up with less of what you wanted than when you started. For example, chronic cocaine administration results in lower dopamine levels which means a muting of pleasure from ordinary experiences.

People try to self-medicate a need, and end up worse off neurochemically, and the financial, legal and social cost can end up finishing them off.

What is really needed, in my opinion, is new research and development of new classes of safe, sustainable, mood brightening drugs.

We would get very far just by developing new classes of drugs that could reverse the damage done by chronic stress, depression and trauma.

Just the ability to restore a normal, healthy brain would eliminate the desire behind a lot of compulsive drug use.

The SSRI class works partly by kickstarting hippocampal neurogenesis. The currently in clinical trial NSI-189 is an improvement in that regards.

Work should also be directed at finding ways to restore youthful dopamine levels in aging humans.

We could put an end to the truth behind lyrics like "Life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone"

A citation wouldn't be used for that sentence, by convention, because it's in the article's abstract, rather than in the article proper.

Moreover, regardless of what you think about drug (ab)use, it is a matter of increasing global concern. That doesn't imply anything about enforcement, legalisation, etc; it's just a statement of fact.

As far as I can tell it's a matter of decreasing global concern. US pushed a huge swath of global drug policy, and now that it's backtracking more reasonable responses are becoming common.

Maybe now, though the article's from 2008 and it's only comparatively recently in history that the drug war began. I mean, fair point, but it seems we're just quibbling about a background sentence. Even if it did oversell the problem/motivation, that's not unheard of in academic papers...

It's a minor point, but this trend has been picking up steam for a while. Not going though the full list, but 2008 was in the middle of this.

Several states had already long allowed medical use by 2008. Maine 1999, Nevada and Hawaii 2000 etc. But, Massachusetts decriminalized in 2008. 2009 Maine " further decriminalized cannabis when Governor John Baldacci signed legislation (LD 250) which made possession of 2.5 ounces or less a civil infraction.[27][28]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis_by_U.S._j...

I don't think anyone's going to argue that drug abuse is a matter of increasing concern. In America, at least, prescription drug abuse seems to be getting out of hand.

Drug use is a whole different story.

And what mess might that be?

Falsified nutrition and health info. Dysfunctional schooling. Nuclear proliferation. Chronic institutional racism. Legalized lobbying and corporate fundraising. Disintegration of the middle class. Ubiquitous debt. Corporate financial corruption.

A widespread movement of empathy and egolessness (inspired or not by psychedelics) would help us share, help one another and redirect our values to and not waste so much time and resources.

This reminds me of the story of the KGB analyzing Chairman Mao's stool samples from the "private bathroom" they provided when he visited USSR. [0] [1]

[0] http://thepeoplescube.com/peoples-blog/kgb-agent-stalin-extr...

[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35427926

It was said, back in hte 90's, that the Brazilian President (Fernando Collor de Mello) would have his... dejects... checked, in his first visit to the USA. There were some rumors, back that time, that he was a cocaine user.

My mate works for a water treatment company, so he's regularly down the sewers doing stuff. His best ever comment was that he hates it in the rich towns cos the shit stinks vile. But in the poor towns it smells OK.

I had always thought all shit smells the same.

Clearly you don't know shit.

Dietary differences I guess? I'm sure there are scientists, especially in the wildlife area that specialize in the compounds in feces.

My thought was maybe other things go down the drains that alter the chemistry? Cheap bleach vs expensive bleach? Hummus? Shampoo? Or maybe just a meat rich diet vs a more vegetarian diet of the poor folks.

He also said that in the pumping stations there are thousands of frogs and toads that have fallen into the road side drains and have been swept down the sewers. They get chewed up in the pumps.

I spent a summer pumping out septic tanks (good money, but not a job I'd choose again), and didn't notice any such difference -- rich sht smelled like poor sht. (though the wealthier customers tended to have more non-degradable bits in the sludge, I guess they didn't care as much about keeping their septic system healthy by taking care about what they flushed).

One customer called us after their son flushed all of his legos down the toilet, we had to suck them out of the drainfield cleanouts too, not sure how they made it that far since legos tend to sink. There must have been thousands of pieces, he must have worked long and hard on flushing them.

I think your mate should write a blog post.

I'd love for him to shove that shit into a gas chromatograph and check for objective differences.

I find it very hard to believe that those excreted drug residues don't react with detergents, chemicals used for cleaning, oils from foods and all kinds of other pills, drugs and plants that end up in sewage. Does the study take that into account ?

Also, it is said that about 80% of dollar bills contain traces of cocaine. So combine the measurements of drugs on money and of drugs in shit and you end up with an interesting picture of society..

If it's made it through your body, it's likely to make it through the sewer... Not a lot of really reactive stuff there (cleaners/oils/detergents dissolve, not degrade), anything super reactive (e.g. bleach) exhausts itself chewing on poop. Microbial degradation is a thing, but it's not very different from human degradation so anything that's already been excreted is probably pretty stable.

Any ideas on making a visualization?

(2008)

Yup, already saw this ages ago. Very old news.

can we get a map of caffeine intake by region.

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