Throw it out of court, AmeriKans.
"Crime lab shuttered over flawed drug tests" by Associated Press / February 19, 2011
MINEOLA, N.Y. — Officials in Nassau County, N.Y., shut down their crime lab yesterday following revelations that inaccurate measurements involving drug cases were known by police officials. Besides analyzing drugs, the lab handles ballistics, blood alcohol, and other police evidence, ranging from homicide investigations to larcenies.
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"US lab cited for lapse in monitoring drugs" by Associated Press / February 18, 2011
SAN FRANCISCO — Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California failed to keep track of samples of dangerous drugs, including cocaine, amphetamines, opium, and black tar heroin, the Energy Department’s inspector general said in a report yesterday.
Some drugs were missing. But in one case the lab found more opium and black tar heroin than records showed had been purchased legally.
The report said the accounting lapses created “an opportunity for improper or illegal use.’’
Employees at Livermore, one of the federal government’s top science labs, handle as many as 42 different kinds of dangerous drugs, including black tar heroin, cocaine, phencyclidine, and steroids. The drugs are used for biomedical research and forensic science, and in the lab’s health clinic for the treatment of workers there....
A spokesman for the lab said the amount of nearly every controlled substance kept on hand was a gram or less. The samples are kept in a safe and in the case of illicit drugs are mainly used to help law enforcement verify that drugs they have seized as evidence are actually what they appear to be.
???
Minute amounts of each drug are used to perform the forensic tests, then immediately destroyed, said lab spokesman Jim Bono. He said many of the samples kept in the safe have been around for up to a decade....
I'll bet the potency has worn off, huh?
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