Inhuman traces
Things must be put right. Most of the worst-affected victims were state-house tenants who were tarred with the label of P-user and made to pay. It’s hard to overstate the incompetence and, in some cases, sheer callousness that have characterised the eviction of tenants in the past couple of years after trace levels of methamphetamine were found in rental houses. The epidemic of expulsion has, not without reason, been called a witch-hunt and a moral panic. But the cause is plain and simple: trusted officials erroneously equated tiny traces detectable after drug usage with the full-blown toxic contamination left in actual meth (P) lab premises and set rules on that basis. It now transpires that traces on surfaces, such as those left by P use, are harmless to subsequent occupants, yet people…
