Drug interdiction and prison visitors.

Prison visitors.

Let's face it. Sure prison visitors occasionally smuggle in contraband such as drugs or cell phones. Yet let us be realistic in such matters too. Most of the drugs sold in prisons is smuggled in by the guards, not the visitors.

This may be one reason why guards are so vigilant about interdicting drug trafficking by visitors. The use of these ion-related non-invasive drug testing devices to scan prison visitors is absurd. The false positive rate in some trials has been 17 percent with some substances such as chocolate or gasoline residue believed to be particularly prone to causing false positives. Those tests that include waving the detection wand near the visitor's shoes are hardly testing the visitor but are more likely to be testing the cleanliness of a city's sidewalks.

The US Bureau of Prisons dropped the testing long ago but individual states still use the devices despite an absurdly high false-positive rate. After all, its entertainment for those prison guards who pocket the drug money they themselves make while chortling There Is No Constitutional Right To Prison Visitation. A lengthy drive to visit a relative in prison? Pretty sure that these days it will involve a stop at a gas station. Yet gasoline residue is likely to set off those testing devices. Eat a candy bar enroute so as to avoid stopping for a full meal? Great idea but the chocolate will likely cause a false alarm. Protecting the public? Punishing the drug users? Or simply protecting the guard's own drug selling monopoly? Which do you really think is more likely?