Part 13 (1/2)
As the urinalysis craze grew, it was only a matter of time before somebody cashed in. In recent months several companies have sprung up offering ”clean” urine to anyone who wants to pay for it.
The bottle that I ordered came in a brown envelope from a Michigan firm called Insurine Labs, a pioneer in this exciting new field. The urine-by-mail business is going so swimmingly that Insurine's founders say they've expanded the operation.
”It's a growth industry,” says business manager Al Robinson. ”We started it. We're No. 1. We send out a good product.”
Since Consumer Reports has yet to test mail-order urine, and since I wasn't about to attempt any comparisons myself, I had to take Al's word on the quality issue.
”We've got distributors in 33 states,” he went on. ”We're franchising in Canada. We're in London.”
I asked him where the stuff comes from. More to the point, who it comes from. ”We've got two labs in California that hire donors,” Al said. He described the donors as normal, healthy persons trying to make a little extra money. He said they get $5 a shot, but they don't get paid until the urine sample tests clean.
Each bottle arrives with a piece of paper stating that the urine contains no detectable amounts of amphetamines, barbiturates, methadone, opiates, metabolized cocaine, benzodiazepine or THC, the active ingredient in marijuana.
And at the bottom of the chart, highlighted (fittingly) in yellow magic marker, is this disclaimer: ”THIS PRODUCT IS SOLD AS ADVERTISED AS A SPECIMEN ONLY. INSURINE LABS DOES NOT IMPLY OR SUGGEST THAT IT BE USED IN ANY UNLAWFUL OR IMPROPER MANNER.”
I asked Al Robinson what his product might be used for, other than rigging a drug test. ”People use it for what they want to use it for,” he said. ”They can wash their small car with it, you know what I mean?” A second warning on the Insurine urine chart says: ”NOT TO BE TAKEN INTERNALLY UNDER ANY CIRc.u.mSTANCES WHAT SO EVER [sic].”
So Al isn't taking any chances.
At first, he said, he and Insurine founder Meryl Podden considered the urine-selling scheme ”a novelty.” Originally they sold the samples for $49.95 ”and there was no sales resistance at all. None.”
The price came down with the compet.i.tion. After Insurine was mentioned in U.S. News and World Report, orders shot through the roof. Al says the company is doing so well that he and Meryl decided to franchise, so they'd no longer have to do the s.h.i.+pping.
I said this sounded like the ideal set-up, not having to handle the stuff yourself.
Al said there have been no problems, no complaints from unsuspecting postmen. He said the packages must be st.u.r.dy to withstand the frigid Michigan winters. Each sample is sent in a clear plastic bottle with a screw top.
”They don't leak,” Al added. ”And there's no law against it. Nowhere in the country.”
Customers who don't intend to use the sample for a drug test might have trouble deciding what else to do with it. As a gift idea it leaves something to be desired, though the bottle itself is attractive enough. A mischievous sort might be tempted to leave it on the cologne counter in a big department store, but of course this would be wrong.
Yacht-pot policy makes zero sense May 11,1988 Sleep well, America. Your borders are safe.
Last Sat.u.r.day, the Coast Guard cutter Tampa seized a luxury yacht in the Yucatan Channel after a search turned up 1/10th of an ounce of marijuana, scarcely enough to roll a joint.
The capture of the 133-foot Ark Royal was executed under Operation Zero Tolerance, a new policy that encourages the Coast Guard to probe the crannies of private boats. Guardsmen spent the weekend stopping vessels in South Florida; eight have been seized locally, including a shrimp boat carrying a misdemeanor amount of pot.
This isn't Zero Tolerance, it's zero intelligence.
Of all the idiotic ways to waste money and manpower, this is one of the all-time tops. It ranks with the infamous Florida City Roadblock of 1982, when hundreds of cars northbound from the Keys were stopped and randomly searched for drugs and illegal aliens.
The roadblock resulted in only a few seizures, and the State Attorney's Office refused to prosecute because of const.i.tutional questions. Out of pure embarra.s.sment, the debacle was not repeated.
Now comes Zero Tolerance, which permits the confiscation of any vessel carrying even minuscule amounts of drugs. Forget the fundamental questions of guilt or innocence: Who had possession of the stuff? Who carried it on the boat? Did the owner even know?
The ostensible point is to punish recreational drug consumers for their role in the nation's h.e.l.lish narcotics problem.
On Sunday the Ark Royal was towed to Key West amid much fanfare and many mini-cams. What a blow against the drug cartels: a sw.a.n.k $2.5 million yacht in tow, all because of 1/10th of an ounce of pot!
Before you start cheering, consider this: The Ark Royal's owner was far away in California when his boat was seized. Not a shred of evidence connected him to the teaspoon of marijuana, or to any narcotics involvement. Yet he's the one who had to pay.
The Coast Guard returned the Ark Royal Tuesday, but what of the other Zero Tolerance cases? The U.S. government (meaning taxpayers) will spend a small fortune pursuing the seizures, only to get pounded in court.
The policy is rotten with holes: indiscriminate, inequitable, ineffective. Do charter captains now have to strip-search their customers before heading out for a day of deep-sea fis.h.i.+ng? And what about the big cruise liners-why isn't the Coast Guard boarding the S.S. Norway for a cabin-by-cabin shakedown?
Taking Zero Tolerance to its logical extreme, perhaps we'll see a day when the Coasties confiscate one of our own aircraft carriers because some dumb sailor stashed a joint in his bunk. Think of what the U.S.S. Nimitz would bring at public auction!
The very idea of using the Coast Guard for this headline-grabbing nonsense is an insult to the men and women who serve in the agency. If search-and-rescue has been officially replaced by search-and-seizure, then at least let them go for tonnage, not tokers.
All this year we've heard the Coast Guard bra.s.s complaining about the $100 million shortfall in the current budget-a deficit that's forcing cutbacks in the agency's interdiction efforts.
But if this is what they wanted the money for, then their budget deserves to be hacked. Give the extra millions to the DEA, or to local police. Shut down some crack houses. Put some real smugglers in jail.
There's no question that casual drug users fuel the underground narcotics economy, but confiscating private boats-whether it's the Ark Royal or a leaky dinghy-won't change a thing. It certainly won't change anyone's mind about using gra.s.s or cocaine. That takes education, and education isn't as splashy as a fancy yacht.
Zero Tolerance is a stunt that displays the sinking desperation, and hypocrisy, of the so-called war on drugs. While Reagan's boys secretly negotiate a cushy exit for a dope-dealing tyrant in Panama, the Coast Guard is snooping after ski boats off Crandon Beach.
Drug czar would scare any pusher June 24, 1988 Pablo Escobar and the rest of the South American drug barons are undoubtedly quaking in their Guccis, following the announcement that Florida soon will have a full-time ”drug czar.”
This promises to be a thrilling mission, at least the way Gov. Bob Martinez describes it.
He promises that the new czar will have broad responsibility for fighting narcotics on all fronts. The governor went so far as to say that the drug czar will have his very own task force, and that this task force will actually have the power to make ”recommendations.”
I can already hear those lily-livered liberals crying whoa, let's not get carried away! A task force is so...extreme-why not start with a committee, or maybe a small advisory board?
But I say bravo, Governor! Throw down the gauntlet. Take off the gloves. When the going gets tough, the tough make recommendations.
Martinez proposes urine testing for bus drivers and the death penalty for drug kingpins, and he stands the same chance of achieving either one. One of the governor's boldest ideas is to unleash the National Guard to do battle against the cocaine t.i.tans. This should certainly liven up those long weekends at the armory.
The governor was not terribly specific about exactly what the National Guard is supposed to do, but this is why you need a drug czar, to nail down the details.
Another important priority of the $6o,ooo-a-year drug czar should be thinking up snazzy code names for investigations.
You've noticed that every major drug bust has a clever-sounding name to go with it-Operation Grouper, Operation Black Tuna, and so on. Unfortunately, after so many years and so many big cases, we're running short of catchy code words. Now you hear things like Operation Dead Flounder, or Zero Tolerance.
We desperately need a drug czar to make sure that all future nicknames sound good on TV and fit neatly into newspaper headlines.
”Czar” itself is a word that newspapers love because it's short, and it has a ”z” in it. Headline writers almost never get to use the letter z, so in the months ahead you'll be seeing many news items such as: ”Drug Czar Says Crack is Very Bad.”
Or: ”Czar to Smugglers: Stay Out of Florida!”
One of the czar's most vital jobs will be to call press conferences in order to ”put the drug smugglers of the world on notice.” This should be done at least twice every year.
One problem facing the new czar is that so many different law enforcement agencies are fighting Florida's drug war, it's hard to know who should get the praise for a big seizure.