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The Sip Safe wristband lets you dab on a drop of your drink to test if it's been spiked.
You learn the rules early when you go to gigs, festivals and bars: Always keep an eye on your drink. Watch out for strangers. Be careful who you leave your glass with.
But now an Australian invention could change that (and put less onus on young people -- especially women -- to completely change the way they act when they're out).
The Sip Safe is a wristband designed for concerts and festivals that lets you test for drugs in your drink. Dab a drop of your drink onto the two spots on the band, wait two minutes till the liquid dries, and if the spots turn darker blue, that's a sign that your drink could have been spiked.
It's not the first invention designed to make drink safety easy -- we've seen drug-testing drinkware, sensors that look like swizzle sticks and even nail polish that tests for date-rape drugs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @10:42PM (3 children)
The only people that I've known who ingested spiked substances did so via joints. I'm not sure what my female smoked, but people don't normally pass out from smoking pot. The other acquaintance smoked a joint laced with crack.
Drinks themselves probably do get spiked occasionally, but the whole process is rather convoluted to the point where it seems particularly foolish. Alcohol consumption, even for a minor, carries low risk of prosecution, especially if there's date rape drugs found in the blood stream afterwards. But, other substances can result in larger consequences and as such the accuser has far less leverage in the situation as the prosecutors are likely less willing to agree to a deal to bring things to trial against the alleged rapist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @02:24AM (2 children)
So the root problems are the fucked up "substance" laws.
When will activists for (some) rape victims begin calling for a more libertarian approach to "substances?" Or at least decriminalization. Or at least, here's a concept: requiring a mens rea that's a tad bit higher than some nebulous, undefinable "devil worship." Says here on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]: "In jurisdictions with due process, there must be both actus reus ("guilty act") and mens rea for a defendant to be guilty of a crime (see concurrence). As a general rule, someone who acted without mental fault is not liable in criminal law. Exceptions are known as strict liability crimes."
So there it is in a nutshell; this is the heretofore unexplained (to me at least) factor that prevents rapes from being reported. Therefore, I cannot take certain rape activists seriously unless they at least move to end strict liability drug laws. Do that, and we've massively empowered (some) rape victims. And that was what this was all about, right?
Well, not yet. That's not a complete solution. Why are we funding police departs to become militarized in lieu of working through the well-known backlog of rape kits? Where is the activism to get that problem fixed?
Instead the proposed solutions become increasingly absurd and anti-democratic. Certain activists are working against due process (q.v. prior link) when what their cause needs is more complete due process.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @02:56AM (1 child)
No, the root of the problem is that there are people out there that don't feel that the laws apply to them, legalizing things would make it somewhat more easy to report the crime, but not necessarily actually reduce the problem as then you'd have somebody doing one type of drug and arguing that the other one wasn't consented to.
People make all sorts of specious arguments for legalizing things that have, in most cases, very real downsides from a societal aspect. Granted, pot probably shouldn't be legal, but if pot is legal, it's likely that these same people will find other things to slip the drugs into.
Not to mention that most rape accusations are amongst people that know each other, not strangers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @03:44AM
It seems you expect to just simply be privileged enough to never become victimized by a criminal, to the extent that you're willing to pursue an anti-democratic agenda.
Let me know when men and women both become angels. You and the VIM guy need to get together. I'm looking forward to the paradise where the body is capital and rape just magically doesn't happen unless it's stipulated in voluntary agreement.