The Widdershins

Hi gang! How’s your anxiety level? Mine goes up and down, but I’ve pretty much learned to ride the wave. We’ve been seeing lots of talk from doctors and psychiatrists that their  patients are suffering from higher anxiety levels over the past couple of years. I was not really comforted by the ‘Anonymous’ op-ed assuring us ‘there are adults in the room’. Are they on meds? You’d have to be to hang out with that gang and not throw yourself out the window. I wonder if Anonymous is one of the two who went to Yale psychiatrist Brandy Lee last fall?

Two White House officials actually contacted me in late October, stating that Trump was “scaring” them, that he was “unraveling.”  Not wishing to confuse the role I chose, as an educator of the public, and a potential treatment role, I referred them to the local emergency room without inquiring much further.

That’s some pretty shitty advice if you ask me. I can just imagine walking into my local emergency room and telling them I need some Xanax because Trump is scaring me. (Although he does)

Anyway, my post is not really about Trump’s erratic behavior or anxiety in America (or the world for that matter). I just want to share some odd news pertaining to drugs. Maybe we all need this…

HUGO — This town on Colorado’s Eastern Plains warned its residents not to drink, bathe in or cook with its tap water on Thursday because officials said multiple preliminary tests of the water came back positive for THC, the main psychoactive compound in marijuana.

…

Concerns about the water were first raised by a Hugo company using quick “field tests” to check employees for THC, Yowell said. The strip tests are similar in function to home pregnancy tests in that they return only two results: positive or negative.

Yowell said the company, which he did not name, had been getting inconsistent results and decided to test a vial of tap water, expecting it to be negative. Instead, the test came back positive, and the company called the authorities.

But wait! Not so fast – says the people with a lick of sense.

Peter Perrone, who owns Wheat Ridge cannabis testing facility Gobi Analytical, said cannabinoids such as THC or CBD “are in no way soluble in water.”

“There is zero possibility that there’s anything like THC in the Hugo water,” Perrone said.

What is with these field test kits? They obviously don’t work. How many people went to jail based on these faulty kits?

WILMINGTON, N.C. (AP) — A North Carolina sheriff’s office thought it made a huge drug bust, seizing 13 pounds of fentanyl worth $2 million on the street. The powder was found in a home along with other drugs and paraphernalia. A field test indicated it was the powerful opioid, justifying a host of charges against three suspects.

…

The sheriff’s office then sent the powder to a private lab, and the results arrived this week. New Hanover Sheriff’s Lt. Jerry Brewer tells WECT-TV that the powder seized in July includes no illicit ingredients, and is nothing more than “a combination of simple and complex carbohydrates.” In other words, sugar, worth about $8 at the grocery store.

Here is another where the state police (IOW taxpayers) paid dearly for their mistake. Poor guy lost his job, apartment and all his possessions over soap.

Pennsylvania State Police paid $195,000 to settle a New York man’s claims he was wrongly jailed for nearly a month after troopers using a field drug test mistook soap for cocaine, a court document obtained by The Morning Call shows.

…

A search of their rented Mercedes-Benz revealed two brick-size packages covered in clear plastic and red tape, according to the police report. Cruz, who was the driver, told the troopers they contained homemade soap for her sister, whom Cruz was traveling to visit in Florida, it says.

What really got me started on ‘drug news’ was this recent article. (my bold)

Police in the Long Island town of Coram, N.Y. are looking for the people responsible for putting up vending machines that appear to be crack pipes. Two of the small blue machines were found over the weekend and angry residents reported them to police, who then removed them. The machines have coin slots where would-be patrons insert $2 to get a pen-shaped device that has the items required to construct a pipe used to smoke crack cocaine.

“They were actually repurposed tampon dispensers”, said Jack Kreiger, Communications Director for the Town of Brookhaven, CNN reported.

Speaking of pipes… what do you do if you’re a pot shop clerk who is being robbed. Why, you grab your handy-dandy, trusty, big glass bong. (Don’t miss the teeny pooch at the beginning)

I found this amusing, except I’m surprised no one was killed.

A group of undercover Detroit police posing as drug dealers tried to arrest another group of undercover police posing as drug buyers in a mishap that resulted in a brawl between more than two dozen armed officers.

“This is probably one of the most embarrassing things I’ve seen in this department,” Detroit Police Chief James Craig said Monday, according to the Detroit Free Press.

Idiots. There’s video of the ‘brawl’ at the link.

I’ve got a couple more, but I think I’ll put them in the comments. I’m extra lazy right now – anxiety level low but could change at any time! Open thread, of course.