Priorities, Please

Golly, from how many different angles can I approach this?

ATLANTA, Oct. 29 (UPI) -- Scientists developing an electronic drug sniffer made a device that can "smell" just a few trillionths of a gram of cocaine, a scientific journal says.

And why would you want to detect "just a few trillionths of a gram"? If the boy in the bubble ventured out of his plastic this morning for more than 8 seconds while the nurse wasn't looking he'd have had a few trillionths of a gram of cocaine on him.

Our technology provides a hand-held sensing device capable of real-time detection, reducing the time between drug seizure and laboratory analysis," says Desmond Stubbs, a doctoral candidate in chemistry at Georgia Tech.

Great! If this (obviously infallible) gadget can substitute for laboratory analysis in the hands of a cop, let's just let his partner substitute for judge & jury, too. As long as only a few trillionths of a gram sends up red flags, bogging down that bureaucratic court system is a real potential problem; we wouldn't want to do that.

Besides being ultra-sensitive, the device, nicknamed "dog-on-a-chip," can distinguish between various kinds of illegal drugs.

So if I've been within a quarter mile of ANY type of illegal drug use I'm in trouble. Ohh-kaaaay.

(it's)"an elegant fusion of biotechnology and microelectronics," according to William Hunt, a Georgia Tech professor.

I like those buzzwords, Friend; I can see you have a future. Let's talk. Where would you like to see your Department in 10 years? And also, I've got a friend not too far from Atlanta with some economic development plans for some land he owns; I bet Police Departments all over this great Country will need a few of these gizmos. What did you call it again?

The U.S. Customs Service and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy provided funding for this research.

I can see plenty of value in researching electronic sniffers. Forensics, search and rescue, I dunno... airplane bombs, maybe. But minute amounts of drugs that give positive results with which you virtually can not argue and which create situations where the case is, in effect, settled right there with the cop? Why is this stuff getting funded? Where does it lead?