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Officials told residents of a small Colorado community [Hugo, CO] not to drink or shower in tap water Thursday because one of the town's wells may have been contaminated with THC, marijuana's intoxicating chemical.
[...] Investigators found signs that one of Hugo's five wells had been tampered with, but they hadn't determined whether someone deliberately tainted the water.
Hugo prohibits marijuana cultivation, product manufacturing, testing facilities and retail marijuana stores, although those activities are legal elsewhere in the state.
Peter Perrone, owner of a marijuana testing facility in the Denver area, expressed doubt that THC could be in the water. The chemical isn't water-soluble, he told The Denver Post.
It's unlikely that consuming pot-tainted water would cause lasting health effects, said Mark Salley, a spokesman for the state Department of Public Health and Environment.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2016, @02:25PM
No guesses needed.
There was a post about that a week ago on Techdirt, titled Field Drug Tests: The $2 Tool That Can Destroy Lives [techdirt.com], covering a NYT article [nytimes.com] from two weeks ago.
It's mostly about "Amy Albritton, who spent 21 days in jail thanks to a false positive", lost her job, her apartment and furniture (considered abandoned after disappearing for three weeks), now has a felony record (pleaded guilty to get out instead of facing three years in jail - after three weeks in jail, the evidence was still not tested) and can't get a new job (see: felony record).
All that because the cops used a cheap test (that also reacts to a hundred or so legal substances), treated it as definite evidence and locked her up. There are also a few more examples in there.
Down in the comments below the TD article a forensic scientist ("Jessie") popped up, gave a decent explanation about the tests and their unreliability.