‘Tens of thousands of people every year are sent to jail based on the results of a $2 roadside drug test. Widespread evidence shows that these tests routinely produce false positives. Why are police departments and prosecutors still using them?
The Houston Police Department has ended its longstanding practice of using $2 chemical kits to make drugs arrests, a policy that had contributed to hundreds of wrongful convictions in recent years.
In announcing the change, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said the department was abandoning the use of the kits, known formally as chemical field tests, because conducting the tests in the field had exposed officers to the dangers posed by potentially lethal drugs such as fentanyl. He did not address the recent scandal that had shown the unreliable tests to have often been the only evidence used to gain guilty pleas from innocent defendants.’
Read more: Houston Police End Use of Drug Tests That Helped Produce Wrongful Convictions

‘Tens of thousands of people every year are sent to jail based on the results of a $2 roadside drug test. Widespread evidence shows that these tests routinely produce false positives. Why are police departments and prosecutors still using them?
The Houston Police Department has ended its longstanding practice of using $2 chemical kits to make drugs arrests, a policy that had contributed to hundreds of wrongful convictions in recent years.
In announcing the change, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said the department was abandoning the use of the kits, known formally as chemical field tests, because conducting the tests in the field had exposed officers to the dangers posed by potentially lethal drugs such as fentanyl. He did not address the recent scandal that had shown the unreliable tests to have often been the only evidence used to gain guilty pleas from innocent defendants.’
Read more: Houston Police End Use of Drug Tests That Helped Produce Wrongful Convictions