Roadside Drug Testing Comes to Michigan, and the MSM is Selling It

Road Pirates can now get a swathe of your spit if you “look” drugged, and the state media outlets love it.

Starting November 8, if you live in Michigan, in one of these five counties – Berrien, Delta, Kent, St. Clair, and Washtenaw – then you might find yourself pulled over and coerced into having a drug test. The Michigan State Police will force you to pull your car over. They will then demand that you get your mouth swathed so they can test to see if you have taken any drugs.

But don’t worry folks, it’s “legal.” This is a pilot program that was passed by your Michigan Legislature (if you live in Michigan) and signed by your Governor (if you live in Michigan) in 2016.  The police state acts were Public Acts 242 and Public acts 243.

As a side note, Michigan has a total of 83 Counties. If you look at the per capital incomes of the counties, and list them in order from highest to lowest, these five counties rank 4^th (Washtenaw), 16^th (Kent), 18^th (Berrien), 22^nd (St. Clair), and 36^th(Delta).  That would make sense that the counties would be selected from the higher income levels, as they are most likely going to be able to pay the fines.

But there’s more to the story than the police-state actions being taken by the Michigan State Police. There is this – the method with which the state media are covering this story. You see, if you’re going to take away muh freedoms, you have to trot out a boogeyman.

Let’s just take a peek at how MLive Michigan covered this story:

Over the last several years, Michigan has seen a steady increase in fatal crashes involving drivers impaired by drugs. In 2016, there were 236 drug-involved traffic fatalities, which is an increase of 32 percent from 179 drug-involved traffic fatalities in 2015, according to the MSP.

And there you have your boogeyman folks – muh deaths. But check out the numbers of deaths that they are using to justify the taking away one of your basic liberties. There are 9.2 million people in Michigan. That means we are talking about attempting to prevent or curtail a phenomenon that affects 1 in 38,900 people, or .000002 percent.

They talk about this dramatic 32 percent increase, but when you’re talking about such low numbers in a population of 9.2 million people, you’re not really measuring any meaningful data that can faithfully be used to gauge actual trends. Of course, the state media leaves that part out and just lets the 32 percent float out there for you take in.

The 32 percent is the boogeyman they’ve called out.

Oh my god, there’s been a HUGE spike in deaths as a result of drug use! Something must be done! I know, let’s empower armed road pirates to be able to pull people over and, at gun point, demand they let us put a swab in their mouth to see if they got any drugs in them.

But wait, you might say, this is the land of the free, the home of the brave, people might actually be a bit ticked that we’re doing this. Well, first we need to rely on state media to trot out that boogeyman, and do it in a graphic way.

If you go to the article, right after the excerpt I highlighted above, they show a picture of a vehicle that’s been totaled, presumably (though it doesn’t say) as a result of drug use while driving.

In addition to relying on the state media to really hype the boogeyman (we’re ALL GONNA DIE!), let’s make this a pilot program and just run it in a few counties for one year, so we can see how the public reacts.  If they get really pissy about it, like super pissy, then we’ll cancel the program and say, “we listened to you and we stopped the program, because THAT’s democracy in action.”

Of course, never mind that you thought it would be a good idea to start a program like this in the first place, that’s just the type of police-state thinking we would rather gloss over.

But let’s get back to the police staters.

And if we’re lucky, the Michigan brave in the Michigan land of the free will accept this inconvenience on their lives, because, if it can save one life, well…..

I mean, if you don’t have anything to hide, why should you worry about this?

Back to the State Media article:

“Motorists under the influence of drugs pose a risk to themselves and others on the road,” Col. Kriste Kibbey Etue, director of the MSP, said. “With drugged driving on the rise, law enforcement officers need an effective tool to assist in making these determinations during a traffic stop.”

There was no challenge to this police state colonel’s statement by the state media. They just let it there to hang. As a matter of fact, in the whole article, this state media agit prop piece never once offers any questioning of what can only be described as a fundamental violation of muh liberties, a violation of the Fourth Amendment (you know protection against unreasonable search and seizure).

But wait, there’s more from the State Media article:

The pilot counties were chosen based on several criteria, including the number of impaired driving crashes, impaired drivers arrested and trained Drug Recognition Experts (DREs) in the county.

DREs are police officers who have received highly specified training that allows them to identify drivers impaired by drugs. Although the pilot program is being organized and managed by the MSP, DREs employed by county, township and municipal police agencies will also be involved, MSP said.

Under the pilot program, a DRE may require a person to submit to a preliminary oral fluid analysis to detect the presence of a controlled substance in the person’s body if they suspect the driver is impaired by drugs.

“Experts” will determine if they think you LOOK like you might be on drugs. I see no room for abuse here, none whatsoever.  And I trust the state to assure that only the bestest and the brightest are assigned to have the “power” to demand they take a swathe of spit from my mouth because they THINK I might look like I’m on drugs.

So ostensibly, this is not random, but it is. Figuring out if someone might be on drugs is hardly an exact science. A person who is tired looks like they are on drugs. A person who might be extremely happy about something, a person who might be really angry about something, a person who is naturally goofy looks like they might be on drugs.

They are invading your mouth with a swab. They are capturing your DNA. And they are doing so without a warrant, based solely on the subjective evaluation of a cop, a cop who most likely has an IQ under 100 (court Oks barring people with too high an IQ from being cops), a cop who has an incentive to find the violators so he or she can meet their quotas for the month (quotas linger).

Let’s finish up with the last paragraph from this State Media article:

The preliminary oral fluid analysis will be conducted by a DRE on the person’s oral fluid, obtained by mouth swab, and will be administered along with the drug recognition 12-step evaluation currently used by DREs. Refusal to submit to a preliminary oral fluid analysis upon lawful demand of a police officer is a civil infraction, MSP said.

Now, that last part is the most important part. “refusal to submit……is a civil infraction.” You want to get the non-gov translation of that sanitized phrase? Here it is: Failure to submit to muh authority and give me your moth so I can extract your DNA from you without a warrant, without any real “just cause” outside of the subjective interpretation of some armed road pirate with an IQ under 100, will result in you being kidnapped and caged, and, if you keep resisting muh authority, you will be shot until incapacitated or dead.

This program is not designed to stop “drugged” driving, it’s designed to raise more revenues for police, it’s designed to give road pirates just another tool in the ransom and fleecing toolbox. No lives will be saved, but cop lives will be enriched, AND as a bonus, politicians will get accolades from government-school-trained sycophants who will thank their overlords from protecting them from an epidemic that is not a real epidemic (and even if it was, this action won’t save them).

If there is an actual trend toward more accidents as a result of ‘drugged’ driving, the problem most likely is that more people are using drugs in irresponsible ways. That problem is far deeper than any swathe in my mouth can solve. That problem speaks more about the health of communities, and that issue, my friends, is mostly caused by the ever-increasing invasive nature of the growing leviathan of the coercive enterprise, the state, in our lives.

This latest move, if anything, will add to the unhealthy conditions of the communities these road pirates are trying to convince you they are serving. And, sadly, most of you Michigan Brave in the Michigan Land of the Free will cheer on this ‘protection’ because, after all, you imagine it’s not going to hurt you because you don’t do drugs, you have nothing to hide.

Well, we’ll see who these low-IQ road pirates catch in their swathe trap. I’m betting it’s going to be more than a few of those who think they have nothing to hide.