Friday, October 27, 2006

 

Please Pee In This Cup—Or Else!

One of the candidates for a local position is making a to-do about being on the “Meth Action Committee” or some such group. I went to a workshop given by several different agencies about methedrine; for a while it was a daily news item, but lately I haven’t heard anywhere near as much about it. Except for some rather large busts, rather than rinky-dinky cookers in some cheap hotel or broke-down trailer. I guess the news value is diminished.

But what I noticed at the workshop was that it was more an advertising venue for local treatment centers—and of course a plea by the police for more money to fight the scourge of addiction. One presenter had all kinds of reasons for making everybody employed anywhere to go through regular urinalysis—forever, presumably. Like it really benefits all of us. If that’s true, then the cops and ministers and school administrators and doctors and psychologists and elected officials should all go through it, too. I doubt that would ever happen. Although, once the drug-testing companies have got everybody else, they might see those professionals as an untapped (pun, sorry, I couldn’t resist) market.

Ultimately, it all comes down to control, doesn’t it? There are people who simply want to control the lives of everybody else. Not just on the job, but all the time. Moral policemen. That’s a sick theme in American society, and I don’t know there’s a cure for it.


October 25, 2006 The Huffington Post

10.25.2006
New Rule: We Don't Need Drug Tests for Librarians
Bill Maher

They can't have very nice lives - librarians. It's like being a teacher, only without the opportunities for dating, because the only kids you meet are the nerds. So the last thing America's shsssshing minority needs is the indignity of a urine test. But that's just what we're doing. I'm not sure this is the best use of our time.
The last time a librarian did something really stupid and reckless on drugs was when Laura married George.

Last year, Florida's Levy County introduced drug testing for library volunteers. Whose average age is between 60 and 85. The volunteers were required to drive to another city - Gainesville - and urinate in a cup "within hearing distance" of a laboratory monitor. That'll teach 'em for offering to work for free. "Okay, grandma, now get pissing. And I'd better hear a nice even unbroken stream."

And then something weird happened. Inexplicably, the number of volunteers dropped from 55 to two. It's almost like they didn't enjoy being degraded. And they call themselves the greatest generation.

I know what you're thinking. If Aunt Iris has nothing to hide, she can get a little of her own urine on her hands and prove she's not strung out on junk. Then we can feel safe, and she can go back to mis-shelving the Readers Digests. But then a second thought occurs to you, later, when you really, really think about it. And that thought is this: What the fuck is wrong with us? Are we high?

They're not flying planes. They're showing the homeless how to use the microfiche readers. For free. The only people who profit from this are the stockholders of the drug testing company, who stood to make $33 a head, money the library would have otherwise just wasted on books.

A spokesman for the libraries said she wouldn't make the volunteers drive to Gainesville for their cavity searches anymore. And she also thought the problem wasn't the drug test itself, but the method they used. That's why they're looking into switching from urine tests to mouth swabs. The same method used by the Florida Department of Corrections.


Copyright 2006 © HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

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