Pubdate: Wed, 21 Mar 2001
Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (WI)
Copyright: 2001 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Contact:  P.O. Box 661, Milwaukee, WI 53201
Fax: 414-224-8280
Website: http://www.jsonline.com/
Forum: http://www.jsonline.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimate.cgi
Author: Jim Stingl

'DRUG' NOT WHAT IT'S CRACKED UP TO BE

In Elm Grove, the smack was wack. The junk turned out to be bunk. The horse
was of a different color.

The heroin wasn't heroin after all.

We can all rest a little easier knowing that children of today are not
bringing heroin to middle school along with a gun, 100 rounds of
ammunition, a switchblade and a bottle of whiskey.

Cops aren't scientists and sometimes they get the wrong answer on their
chemistry tests.

That's what just happened in Elm Grove. The State Crime Lab caught the
error. Now the state may need to do follow-up tests to make sure the elms
out there in the grove aren't really oaks.

In the latest rash of copycat school threats, two 14-year-old boys at
Pilgrim Park Middle School were nabbed this month. Besides the
aforementioned contraband, they had a pill bottle of white powder.

Officers tested the powder to see if it was cocaine and got a negative
result. Then they tested for heroin and, bingo, that one came out positive.
Twice.

Police Chief Jeffrey Haig said he kept referring to the stuff as suspected
heroin when he appeared in front of the media microphones. But "suspected"
was dropped in news accounts because it didn't seem as exciting.

Most police departments in Wisconsin do the preliminary testing of
suspected drugs with a device that sounds like it came out of a Cheech and
Chong movie - the NarcoPouch.

You take some of the powder or green leafy material in question and you
drop it into the clear plastic bag. Then you break open chemical vials
inside the bag and watch for color changes and other chemical reactions. If
you can hear Jefferson Airplane music coming from the pouch, for instance,
that's a positive result.

For some reason, heroin seems to produce more false positives.

Testing at the crime lab is much more sophisticated and is performed by
people in official lab coats. Lab director Michael Camp said you should
forget this notion from the movies of testers dabbing drugs from a baggie -
"for some reason they always used their little finger" - and touching it to
their tongues.

"With our caseload, people would be lying on their backs most of the day,"
Camp said.

Testing at the lab can nail this stuff right down to the molecules. They
can practically tell you which poppy plant it came from.

And the powder from Elm Grove was more poppycock than poppy. It not only
wasn't heroin; it wasn't a drug of any kind. No one seems to know exactly
what the substance really was, but it's fair to say these kids would have
had better luck using it to bake a cake than blow their minds.

Just Say Faux

The bummer, if I may throw out a word from the generation that thinks it
invented recreational drug use, is that they might be charged because it
wasn't a controlled substance. Wisconsin has a law that says if you package
something to look like drugs and you flash it around or offer it for sale,
that's a crime.

There are some good reasons for this law. Your serious drug buyer can get
downright upset if he pays for cocaine and gets powdered milk instead. He
may want to shoot someone.

The imperfection of drug field-testing is not lost on criminal defense lawyers.

"We really rely on the science and it's valuable as a tool, but it's not
perfect," said Thomas Reed, first assistant state public defender in
Milwaukee. "All our attorneys are taught to recognize the fallibility of
the indicator tests."

For any drug case that goes to trial, a state lab test is required. But
plenty of other defendants are charged with drug possession and they plead
guilty without lab confirmation of whatever the NarcoPouch found. But in
most of those cases, the defendant has admitted guilt to police, knows for
a fact the stuff was really drugs, and also possessed paraphernalia or
large bags of potato chips and cookies that point to the presence of drugs.

So, kids, stay away from real illegal drugs and fake ones. And, please,
leave your guns, ammo, knives and whiskey at home.
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