honey – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Man Spends Three Months In Jail Because A Drug Dog And A Field Test Said His Honey Was Methamphetamines

from the another-godawful-trek-through-the-criminal-justice-system dept

Another field drug test has managed to misidentify a common legal substance. This doesn’t matter to the government, which is only out ~$2. But it does matter to the non-criminals being treated like criminals because the ultra-faulty tests are even worse than K-9s at detecting actual drugs.

Field drug tests have determined everything from cotton candy to donut crumbs to drywall dust to bird poop (on the hood of a car no less!) to be illegal substances, resulting in a cascade of horrors on the innocent, starting with the arrest and criminal charges, and proceeding directly to indefinite pretrial detention and the loss of income, housing, etc. that comes with it.

Field drug tests are more “reliable” than drug dogs. I mean, to the extent that they’ll more reliably generate the “probable cause” needed to search a car or arrest a person. If you’re looking to boost your drug war stats, nothing’s more useful than a cheap kit that can’t tell the difference between narcotics and common household items.

Adding to the pathetic annals of cops upending people’s lives with unreliable tests is this new twist: they’re using these at ports-of-entry as well. A legal resident of the US spent three months in jail because the field test couldn’t differentiate between a product created by bees and a product created by amateur chemists in a trailer park bathtub. (h/t Jeff Bonner)

After landing at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport on 29 December at around 10pm, US Customs and Border Protection detained [Leon] Haughton for more than two hours before Maryland Transportation Authority Police put him in handcuffs, according to charging documents.

The bottles with gold-coloured screw tops labelled “honey” in his bag, they told him, had tested positive in a drug field test for methamphetamine.

Mr Haughton fainted. Police took him to a hospital. Then they took him to jail.

Leon Haughton is a Jamaican man with a green card. He’s a legal permanent resident of the US. He often picks up honey from Jamaica during his frequent visits and brings some back for friends and family members. This time he was greeted by Customs and a drug dog. The drug dog was also unable to differentiate between honey and drugs. Having been wrong once, Customs agents decided to be wrong twice. Incapable of thinking for themselves, they let a dog and a packet of iffy chemicals declare Haughton to be a drug dealer carrying a large amount of liquid drugs.

The two erroneous results (dog, field test) were negated three weeks later when the drug lab determined the honey wasn’t actually methamphetamines. Unfortunately, the wheels of justice grind slowly. The felony charges were dropped a little less than a month after Haughton was arrested. All of that time Haughton spent behind bars.

Why? Because the wheels of justice go completely off the rails once ICE gets involved. Haughton was a green card holder and that fact led ICE to issue a detainer. This screwed everything up. The detainer prevented Haughton from being released, even though a judge had cleared Haughton to be freed until his trial date. When his second bail hearing came up, he again asked to be released. The judge wanted to but the detention order possibly meant nothing more than a change of jails for Haughton.

Mr Haughton asked to be released on 24 January at his second bail review, but Anne Arundel County District Court judge Laura Robinson worried he would not appear for trial.

“The problem is I can’t let him go to ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] because he would be deported potentially,” the judge said, according to a recording of the hearing. “Even if I released you, you still wouldn’t necessarily be released. You would go into federal detention.”

Haughton tried again to be released on February 5th. His lawyer pointed out the detainer was based on pending felony charges, all of which had been dropped by prosecutors. Again, the judge could do nothing. Due to the government shutdown, no one from ICE was fielding calls about dropping detainers. Since no one was available to pull the order, Haughton went back to jail.

The other hangup was the locals. Because a drug dog and field test had incorrectly determined Haughton’s honey to be meth, prosecutors were still hanging on to a single misdemeanor charge. This was despite the initial lab test showing the honey was just honey. It wasn’t until a second test came back with negative results that the state finally decided to drop the remaining charge. Once all the charges were gone, ICE finally decided to drop the detainer –one solely predicated on charges the state had dropped nearly two months earlier.

Sure, field drug tests do occasionally detect actual drugs. But the miss rate is too high to legitimately consider them to be the “probable” part of “probable cause.” They’ll never be abandoned because they’re too useful. They create easy arrests and easy prosecutions. Cops like drug busts and prosecutors love anything that might result in a quick plea deal. Given the choice between an indefinite stay in jail awaiting trial and a relatively painless deal with lesser charges, even innocent people will choose the option that gives them more immediate freedom. The government sees nothing but wins when it uses cheap, unreliable tests. All it sees is the occasional error that has zero effect on itself or its personnel.

Filed Under: drug dogs, drug tests, field tests, honey, meth, police

Judge Agrees: Perfectly Fine For Google To Deny Ad Placement For 'Honey Cures Cancer' Claims

from the quackery-perceives-policy-as-censorship,-refused-to-route-around-it dept

Eric Goldman brings us the dismissal of a lawsuit against Google that’s… well, a bit on the unintentionally hilarious side. The lawsuit argues there’s a First Amendment right for Google Ad placement — one that circumvents Google’s policies against allowing questionable claims like “Honey Cures Cancer!” — and contains a request for $10 billion in damages.

El Reg first reported on the lawsuit, filed by a former IBM senior engineer. Apparently tired of the rigorous science involved in his day job, Shajar Abid decided to branch out into speculative fiction.

Abid, who goes by the first name “Shaq” on LinkedIn, claims to have developed “a divine cure for cancer” consisting of “only honey herb and spice.” Google, he insists, will not allow him to advertise the product through AdWords.

He is seeking $10 billion for what he believes is a violation of his First Amendment speech and religious rights, for loss of business, and for pain and suffering. Also, he wants the opportunity to advertise on Google when people search for cancer cures.

Needless to say, it’s a pro se lawsuit, which makes demands Google cover his legal costs a bit perplexing. In addition to the 10billion,Abidwantsthe10 billion, Abid wants the 10billion,Abidwantsthe88 he racked up in ad costs pre-cancellation to be nullified since there won’t apparently be enough money to cover this if he wins.

But he won’t win, something readers may have picked up from the first line of this post. There are many reasons he won’t win, but going pro se and alleging Google’s denial of prime cancer-curing ad placement is somehow a government action is but one of them.

Abid finds it odd Google won’t let him claim honey cures cancer. Well, it will, but it just won’t allow him to buy ad slots for this claim. Abid could start a blog or Facebook page or whatever, but he won’t be allowed to promote it with Google AdWords. Prior legal issues with Google’s pharma ad sales have resulted in policies that won’t allow someone to claim they can cure cancer with honey, no matter how much they firmly believe it will. And Abid believes honey cures cancer as hard as anyone who stands to profit from this claim can possibly believe something. From the lawsuit [PDF]:

Last weekend on Friday March 31 -2017, i received an email that my site had been suspended. It was against google policies as they have details about selling pharmaceuticals etcs..

I said ok, I will call and tell them, i studied the google rules, tell me what to change.

So the first girl I talked to gave a half dozen modifications to do, including take out “divine cure for cancer,” which is my sincerely held religious belief that it is.

But what she doesn’t know is I have done an intensive pharmacognosy study as well as other in depth proprietary research.

I feel this was the first violation, obstructing my 1st amendment rights, however the kind and noble judge interprets.

References are cited.

My philosophy of medicine is based on Moses’s wisdom. One time Mose got sick, so he prayed to God for guidance. God guided him to a plant. So he went and ate it. Then he was cured.

Also this:

I am combining a systems biology empirical approach based on prophetic medicine.

This culminates (sort of) in a Section 1983 claim, which is reserved for deprivation of rights by the government, which Google plainly isn’t. (Or “even under the spirit of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” as the complaint states hopefully.)

The judge points out the obvious in the dismissal [PDF]:

Plaintiff fails to state a § 1983 claim against Google. Plaintiff does not allege any facts suggesting Google is a government actor or was acting on behalf of the state.

And then notes Abid’s opposition to Google’s motion to dismiss states Google shouldn’t even be a party to this lawsuit.

Moreover, Plaintiff’s Opposition appears to suggest that Google is not the proper defendant and that his claims in fact are against nonparty government entities. Opp’n at 3 (“My section 1983 claim should be applied against the US government, due to the gross negligence of both the FDA and the NIH[;] more than 1 year of work has gone into regulation for my small start-up only for FDA to trample my constitutional rights and NIH my civil rights.”). Accordingly, the Court DISMISSES Plaintiff’s § 1983 claim. As Plaintiff argues the FDA and NIH violated his rights, not Google, the dismissal shall be WITHOUT LEAVE TO AMEND.

There’s a Sherman Act (antitrust) claim buried in the lawsuit as well, but the court doesn’t like that approach either.

Plaintiff does not allege facts showing Google had a contract or agreement with LegitScript or any another entity that was intended to harm or unreasonably restrain competition. At most, Plaintiff alleges LegitScript was Google’s service provider. Mot. to Suppl. Pleadings ¶¶ 2, 12. But there are no facts showing Google sought to unreasonably restrain trade, let alone succeeded in doing so.

This will probably only confuse the plaintiff, who so persuasively argued Google was once found guilty of antitrust violations in another country.

I have attached proof Google has done anti-trustful things recently and has been punished by the EU.

The court also finds Abid’s ads violated Google policy, which states it will not permit pharmaceutical ads for non-government approved products that present themselves as proven remedies for illnesses.

Everything is dismissed with Abid given a chance to amend his complaint to fix its numerous deficiencies. The only exception is the Section 1983 claim against Google, which is so far off base (Google isn’t the government) that no amount of amending would fix it.

There’s a big difference between feeling wronged and being actionably wronged. This lawsuit doesn’t even come close to the latter. At this point, Abid has only some wounded pride and outstanding AdWords bill for $88. Filing pro se keeps the costs down but it doesn’t do much for coherent legal arguments. And we’re probably all better off with Google blocking ads that claim faith-infused honey cures cancer.

Filed Under: ad placement, adwords, filtering, first amendment, free speech, google ads, honey, honey cures cancer, shajar abid
Companies: google

DailyDirt: Is It Safe To Eat That?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The global food supply chain is significantly more complicated than it was a few generations ago. Some of it is due to technological progress, but sometimes it’s due to greed and/or pollution. Eliminating waste and making food processes as efficient as possible sounds like a admirable goal, but the food products created at the end of the day should be appetizing… and, more importantly, safe to eat. If you’re not too squeamish, check out these links on food that might churn your stomach.

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: bacteria, cooking oil, feces, fermented, food, food waste, fuet, gutter oil, honey, m&ms, scandal, toxic
Companies: mars

DailyDirt: Making Foods Yucky…

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The modern food industry has developed a lot of techniques to help distribute food efficiently and safely, but sometimes there are a few “bad apples” out there that make it look like the entire food industry is filled with unsavory practices. Here are just a few examples of some food issues that might have hit your plate.

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: china, fish, food, honey, pesticides, stpp, strawberries