The United States is continuously increasing its efforts in monitoring drugs in wastewater

In recent years, the United States has been facing a severe drug abuse problem. To more effectively deal with this crisis, the United States is continuously increasing its efforts in monitoring drugs in wastewater.

In the past, to understand the community transmission status of viruses, many countries had screened for viruses by testing household wastewater in sewers. Now, this method is being applied in the field of drug monitoring. The method of monitoring drugs by extracting wastewater samples has been promoted in Europe and Australia for many years and is now rapidly developing in the United States.

Governments across the United States plan to apply wastewater monitoring to monitor the abuse of illegal high-risk drugs. The principle is that the excrement of drug users will carry drug components. When someone overdoses on drugs, the drug content in domestic sewage will rise accordingly. For example, in Marin County, California, where drug abuse is serious, the preliminary plan has been tested since February this year. Wastewater samples are collected from sewers to test the drug content of opioids, methamphetamine, ***e, nicotine, etc., to understand the drug abuse situation in the community.

BioBot is a wastewater monitoring laboratory designated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the United States and funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. It monitors the abuse of illegal drugs at 70 sites across the United States. The data provided by wastewater monitoring can help public health departments strengthen interventions. Compared with traditional methods that rely on first aid and autopsy reports, sewage monitoring can be more preventive.

However, as monitoring deepens, some concerns have also been raised. On the one hand, overly detailed monitoring may involve personal privacy issues. Although at this stage, this technology cannot be accurate down to individuals and families, as the sample size decreases and the data becomes more refined, public health departments need to carefully grasp the scale. On the other hand, the collection and use of data may also deviate from the original purpose. Some local governments make drug data public, which may have an impact on housing prices and other aspects, and also raises people's doubts about the way data is used.

Despite many challenges, the US government is still actively promoting the monitoring of drugs in wastewater, hoping to more accurately grasp the situation of drug abuse and provide a basis for formulating more effective anti-drug policies and measures to deal with the increasingly serious drug crisis and protect public health and social security. But to ensure the effective implementation of this measure without causing other problems, in-depth discussions and proper solutions are still needed at multiple levels such as technology, law, and ethics.