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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Festival fans face laptop drug test Maurice Chittenden The Sunday Times Sunday 01 Jun 2003 THOUSANDS of people at pop festivals this summer could be subjected to a computerised drug test by police. Fans queueing to see Coldplay, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Foo Fighters at one festival will be asked to provide swab samples from their hands, writes Maurice Chittenden. The samples will be inserted into a drug detection machine which is about the size of a laptop computer and costs £40,000. The machine will flash green, amber or red to show whether any drugs residue has been detected. It is a voluntary test but anyone refusing to take part could be searched by officers. Anti-drug law campaigners say the move is a retrograde step when cannabis is about to be reclassified from a class B to a class C drug. Police plan to use the machine for the first time when the three bands play at the V2003 festival at Weston Park, Staffordshire, in August. Officers tried out the computer at a Stafford nightclub last month. More than 190 people were tested as they queued to go in. Six tested positive, but no drugs were found on them. The human rights group Liberty said: "Police cannot force anyone to take a random drug test. Yet if people refuse, officers could view this as suspicious and then decide to search them anyway." Not all police forces are convinced of the effectiveness of the random tests. Avon and Somerset police will not be using such drug testing at the three-day Glastonbury Festival, Britain's biggest annual pop event, later this month. They intend to target drug dealers rather than users.
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