Drug-testing urinals at schools

Politics Taiwan Politics
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Headline in today’s Taipei Times:

Just what we need - a police state that could outdo even China’s best efforts. While we’re at it, let’s put security cameras inside the toilet stalls to see if any of the kids touch themselves “down there” so we can bust them for child abuse (even if they’re only “abusing” themselves). When it comes to protecting the children, this is no time for halfway measures - we need police surveillance 24/7. Installing RFID microchips in the back of your kid’s neck is another great idea - not only for tracking, but it eliminates the need for an EasyCard.

I suggest that the first drug-testing urinal and accompanying security cameras should be installed in Ho Kan-ming’s home. And then the homes of other politicians, plus the manufacturers of the device. And the homes of the police and judges who would enforce this.

Anyone know anything about Ho Kan-ming? A Google search turned up almost nothing, and no idea if he has any party affiliation.

This movie was ahead of its time - wonder how many people remember it…

youtube.com/watch?v=4hLXOVCZr-8
THX 1138

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The worst part is that probabl, if the kids are on any drugs at all, it would be Ritalin or any fashionable performance enhancer given by parents so they will study more and behave like sheep. Drug testing in elementary schools! Maybe high school, but primary level?! In some hillbilly town in the outskirts of nowhere?! Does she think he is in South Dakota or some lost town in the US or something? You know, the ones where the meth lab is the only thing moving because it is so economically depressed.

Yes, as far as money schemes go, this one is hair brained. Considering the needs of so many kids at that level, drug testing falls way down in the priority level, and it is really bad business for anyone not collecting a red envelope for this. Insults the intelligene bt politicians get away with this stuff and more when given unbriedled power.

Wonder what the next step is. So, they identify a group of kids that went to teh bathroom at the same time. Will they arrest them, bring them for questioning, test their blood against their will, arrest their parents? Do they have accomodations for minors or since they are “drug addicts” -even if just suspected, but, you know, they were in the same group -based on whose observations, I wonder- will they be lodged along the adult population? Or do they plan to follow US model and tailor prision enterprises where the wayward kids will be housed? Yes, I watch Moore’s “documentaries”.

Way beyond FUBAR.

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How does it even work, it sounds extremely expensive and how do they even know who is on what. Do you have to get your finger print scanned before you pee? And why only Urinals? do girls not use drugs as well?

4

Forget about it, you start trying to list the Stupid on this one, you’re up all night.
This is clearly some numbskull tech “advisor” feeding some half-baked technology scenario to Mayor Clueless, who ran with The Voodoo like your Great Aunt Spezzmie her first day on Facebook, so they’d sound “savvy”.
Anyone who knows anything about anything can see 15 or more reasons why it’s technically impossible, never even mind if it’s remotely legal.
Off the top of my stripey little head:

Is there even a basic understanding of how such “sensors” work?? I mean, is there even such a thing as an automatically functioning contact sensor that can detect the presence of these drugs? Last time I checked, drug testing didn’t involve the subject pissing against some sort of surface, their sample still has to go to a lab somewhere to have chemical testing performed on it, yeesh.

And even if there WERE such a thing, in order for this whole scenario to function, how does it work, all the pee that goes in is channeled over the sensor?? Right. Or even worse, the entire surface of the urinal is magically created out of the Abracadabra Sensor material.

Don’t even think about the effort and logistics required to wire up the stone age school facilities with some imaginary Nick Frigging Fury SHIELD KPCC (Kid Pee Command Center), utilizing only the very best of Zhubei Township Municipal Government’s massive technological prowess.

I can’t go on, the more you think about this the more it sounds like something 2 junior high school kids dreamed up while high AF.

Last shot, though?
Aside from the excellent point about testing boys only, what’s to stop the hordes and hordes of drug-crazed 8th Grade Zhubei crackheads from simply peeing in the toilet???

Politicians and elected officials being dumber than a shit-stained bag of hammers, that’s pretty much par for the course.
But for the newspaper, to report the whole screwfest with a straight face, even for this town, that’s a career achievement.

How long, O Lord, how long???

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Well, you see, everybody’s “pee-pee organs” are unique, just like fingerprints. So they put a video camera in the urinal and do a live scan, compare it to the database which they made beforehand (mandatory pee-pee organ scanning before you can register for school) and…

OK, never mind.

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Of all the stupid things I have seen proposed this one is by far… Sadly it isn’t…

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What Rocket said. I’m pretty sure there’s no such thing. The amount of drug metabolites excreted is miniscule - a few micrograms for cannabis - so you’d need some astoundingly sophisticated stuff on the back end of your plumbing that can cope with all the usual smeg that accumulates in plumbing while still giving a reliable readout.

I would guess “expensive” is the key word here. A shitload of money will disappear into the pockets of friends and relatives who own “biotech” companies to develop the equipment. There might be a few half-assed mockups that won’t work and were never intended to work. When everyone’s forgotten about it, they’ll all be off to the Mercedes showroom and the KTV on LinShen Bei Lu.

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I mean, isn’t it sad? Aside from insulting the kids -you bunch of degenerate druga addicts! we will catch you unaware when you pee! we can follow you everywhere, you can’t escape from our vigilante eyes!, wasting the money the kids need for safe, nutricious food, day care, REAL safety measures that will protect them from gtting attacked in the bathroom of their own schools -which has happened too many times recently- green spaces for them to play and develop healthily, etc… should be criminal.

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This my day job and no such device exists. There are disposable devices like dipsticks and electronic biosensors and sophisticated expensive chemical analysed in labs but there are no magic chips that can operate reliably in such an environment. Sounds like this guy has got his red envelopes scrambled with his brains somewhere, apart from the 1984 aspects of what he is proposing.

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Hh2 thanks for the confirmation. That was my understanding also. I know that ‘lab on a chip’ devices do exist that can conduct, say, immunoassay, but they’re not exactly commodity devices, and they have to be handled with kid gloves (just like any other sensitive piece of measuring equipment).

So the conclusion must surely be: the mayor isn’t stupid, but he thinks the public are.

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The government in all its intellectual glory.

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For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.

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Drug users will just pee elsewhere.

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What’s the bet, he gets a bit, from every urine-detector invested in?

Like the lunchbox scandal a couple of years ago that saw not a few elementary school principals go to jail.

Taiwan municipal-level politicians outside of Taipei are not transparent. They are too obvious.

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For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.[/quote]

Duly noted, and deeply appreciated.
Take up thy bed and walk.

Mahalo.

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[quote=“finley”]Hh2 thanks for the confirmation. That was my understanding also. I know that ‘lab on a chip’ devices do exist that can conduct, say, immunoassay, but they’re not exactly commodity devices, and they have to be handled with kid gloves (just like any other sensitive piece of measuring equipment).

So the conclusion must surely be: the mayor isn’t stupid, but he thinks the public are.[/quote]

Exactly, there are ‘lab on a chip’ devices but they’d get gunked up after the 3rd pee and bleach and chewing gum and toilet paper hit them. You’d still need some system to clean the pee sample first and replace the disposable parts regularly.
Legally this would be even MORE of a joke, as how could you attribute which pisser to which pee and surely you need consent first?

Now you could collect the pee and send samples to a lab everyday , it would be pretty easy to do, to screen for drug use of 1000s of compounds within 15 minutes.

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You guys should go to the media with this.