www.nytimes.com/2026/06/21/health/drug-testing-wastwater-sewage.html
Right, the weak minded logic goes. If we can sequence squalor for the sparks of infection we can use it to track drug addicts. Here how its works. Trump’s army goes to poor places without country club watchmen, in the jagged periphery of municipalities, where a person on drugs used the toilet. Then they have a new weapon to stigmatize poor and vulnerable communities.
Meanwhile my work with drug addicts taught me addicts have no family let alone country. That is the trauma of drug abuse. They lose everything they loved because of invisible addiction they do not have treatment they need to escape. Sometimes they recover but just look at Secretary Kennedy — they do not always return to the living. Something breaks inside of them.
Let’s just focus on the addiction stage though. Without country or family or even safe housing they roam and squat in the shadows of neighborhoods without walls or gates, and being biological beings they inevitably have to go too. Therefore with this newest torture device for poor people entire communities will punished because they cannot effectively hide the roaming addicted souls in their hoods.
Personally, what I am excited about is the wastewater surveillance of autocrats and despots. Imagine the possibilities. Lift up a manhole outside of The White House and run a quick test. The poop doesn’t lie afterall, there on our printout will be all of the shitting autocracy in the area destroying our democracy. Then we will know the truth about the fate of the neighborhood.