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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2016, @10:19AM
Economic opportunity, duuuuuuude.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2016, @10:20AM
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/colorado-town-finds-no-marijuana-chemical-in-water-cancels-restrictions/ar-BBuIAHM [msn.com]
Meebee the original tester's fingers were sticky? Did he have cheetoes stains on his shirt?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2016, @10:40AM
Dude, you just harshed my buzz.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2016, @10:45AM
Picture a worldwide campaign to dose the water with MDMA.
And for at least one day, there will be peace on earth.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday July 24 2016, @11:01AM
Russia may be working on a cobalt bomb. :-)
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34797252 [bbc.com]
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Sunday July 24 2016, @06:35PM
Not really...it would just mean millions more hipster zombies instead of just the couple hundred thousand burning man glazed eye zombies that are mostly confined to Northern California, Oregon and Washington state.
The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2016, @07:51PM
Guilty as charged.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2016, @01:11PM
Best part is... The police test strips for THC came back with all the (multiple) false positives.
Now I wonder why that happens with police drug field tests? Any guesses?
(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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2016, @01:20PM
Bet Google News and Facebook will disappear that article and leave the false sensationalist one to stand come November.
If there were any justice in the world, the prohibitionist idiot who lied about the water just to start a national media scare about the dangers of legalization should be involuntarily injected with Seroquel or similar for a year just to see what living with depression is like for those of us who can't get access to marijuana that SSRIs just don't work for. Oh, and also caffeine injections starting around 9 PM so the dickwad can understand the insomnia that comes with it.
I don't know how to induce night terrors, but if there's a way that should be done to him as well. The little reprieve the shithead might get in the unconsciousness of sleep interrupted every single fucking time.
I truly envy our übermensch posters that require not even aspirin on occasion. I wish I knew life without this shit :(
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 25 2016, @05:37AM
No you don't. No really. That's your depression talking. I understand what that is as well, including insomnia, anxiety, blah, blah, blah.
I wouldn't wish what I have on anybody. The stuff that depressives, especially suicidal ones, deal with can break a person. No matter what a person has done, I don't wish to leave them mentally broken.
You wish to fire your heart upon him as if your chest was a cannon. I understand, but reconsider.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by rts008 on Sunday July 24 2016, @12:12PM
Time to move to Colorado, here in Oklahoma all we get are methane and 'toxic brew of the day' tainting our water, courtesy of Big Oil and their whore, Gov. Mary Fallin.
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Sunday July 24 2016, @12:15PM
Note to authorities: You've got the wrong witch hunt here guys [hbci.com]
When Linnda Caporael began nosing into the Salem witch trials as a college student in the early 1970s, she had no idea that a common grain fungus might be responsible for the terrible events of 1692. But then the pieces began to fall into place. Caporael, now a behavioral psychologist at New York's Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, soon noticed a link between the strange symptoms reported by Salem's accusers, chiefly eight young women, and the hallucinogenic effects of drugs like LSD. LSD is a derivative of ergot, a fungus that affects rye grain. Ergotism — ergot poisoning — had indeed been implicated in other outbreaks of bizarre behavior, such as the one that afflicted the small French town of Pont-Saint-Esprit in 1951.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2016, @12:48PM
My art teacher did his master thesis on van Gogh suffering from ergot poisoning. Couldn't confirm it with other reported cases, but given the paintings and behavior; it's at least plausible.
(Score: 2, Funny) by kurenai.tsubasa on Sunday July 24 2016, @12:58PM
Everybody knows it's much, much worse! While everybody knows that LSD-25 eats at the brain of its uses like Coke or any other acid dissolves a tooth or anything really, because acid, maraihuhajuwanna is more like nuclear waste. First of all, it's green, and so is nuclear waste. And do you know what it smells like? I'd rather live next to a combination sewage treatment plant and chicken farm than have to smell marihuhajuwanna for 3 minutes! Cleaning out their water supply will require completely replacing all of the pipes, even the ones that weren't serviced by that well. It could cost trillions. How are they going to afford that once their town is overrun by niggers and property values plummet?
Colorado were fools to legalize it. Anybody who uses it should be fried in an electric chair for their own good. Did you know that Satan himself is in weed? Frying those junkie addicts in the electric chair is the only way to save their souls!
/////////////////s
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2016, @01:16PM
I would just like the record to show that Colorado legalized ahead of the curve, even after getting raided by the Feds constantly when they had medical marijuana, and has maintained a pretty sensible approach to things given that the next presidential election could spell the end to this experiment.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2016, @02:24PM
You must have the straightest posture in the world, possibly the entire universe. I'd suggest getting that checked out by a proctologist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 25 2016, @12:33AM
Holy shit! A sarcasm detector that's immune to even /s! That's an accomplishment.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Ellis D. Tripp on Sunday July 24 2016, @01:45PM
Considering the little fact that THC isn't water soluble and all.
The "positive" result came from using a standard home urinalysis kit on a sample of tap water. Yes, the same lousy tests that commonly cross-react with stuff like ibuprofen or antibiotics.
"Society is like stew. If you don't keep it stirred up, you end up with a lot of scum on the top!"--Edward Abbey
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Sunday July 24 2016, @06:02PM
The "positive" result came from using a standard home urinalysis kit on a sample of tap water
That does not seem possible - the piss tests are looking for metabolites of cannabinoids and not the cannabinoids themselves. They don't detect THC, they detect what your body converts THC into as it processes out of your body. If they freaked out over a home test then they need to be much more concerned about the amount of dem damns hippies draining their lizard into the town water and not someone's lost stash fell in a well.
The home piss tests also say the reagent strip is for preliminary analysis only and includes a cup for storage of urine and postage to send it to a lab for GC/MS which has a near zero false positive rate.
Maybe they relied on a field test drug identification kit that selects for THC and not metabolites. I would imagine they have the same requirements to use a more accurate machine and assume the reagent test will throw false positives.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday July 24 2016, @07:24PM
You can assume that the field test is always followed up with a more accurate analysis, but reports seem to show that the assumption is invalid. One can *hope* that it usually is...but I know of no evidence supporting that hope.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Ellis D. Tripp on Sunday July 24 2016, @08:23PM
From TFA:
He said a company that administers employee drug tests was the first to detect THC in Hugo's water. A tester sampled tap water, assuming it would be negative, but it was positive.
Apparently the cops followed up with field test (presumably looking for actual THC, not metabolites) that gave mixed results:
THC was detected in tests conducted with field kits, although other field tests were negative, sheriff's Capt. Michael Yowell said.
So apparently whatever is in the town's water, can trigger false positives on both the metabolite immunoassays AND at least some of the police field substance ID tests.
"Society is like stew. If you don't keep it stirred up, you end up with a lot of scum on the top!"--Edward Abbey
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 25 2016, @05:53PM
... So today it turns out the test was a false positive. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/24/487257325/colorado-officials-say-its-safe-to-get-back-in-the-water-after-brief-thc-scare [npr.org]
Not pro-pot, not rabidly anti-pot, just want stories if they are posted to be followed up on.