On Date-Rape Drugs

[livingdeb]

One interesting thing I learned in tax prep class today (while awaiting late-comers) is that cranberry juice is a natural antidote to PCP, which was used as a date-rape drug in the 1970s. When you don't get retrograde amnesia, it's easier to testify. And that's how a weight-loss diet based on cranberry juice was the key to the first date-rape conviction.

Our instructor, who is also a forensic toxicologist, also warned us that, unlike on TV, crime lab staff are sometimes criminals themselves. So this is one reason that, if you do get pulled over for DWI, you should not agree to be tested. But if there's no getting around that, ask for the blood test instead of the breathalyzer test because then at least there is leftover blood that can be re-tested later by a third party. There is so much pressure to prosecute DWIs these days that the labs will sometimes lie. In one recent case, the person was driving crazy because she had escaped a rape after being fed a date-rape drug. She got a rape-kit test at a hospital, and even those results were lied about, though finally this all came out.

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Quote of the Day - "Must play three hours of video games to cleanse myself." - me, after working on an application for a job helping students do things like apply for graduation.

Part of the application included some questions that I really didn't get:

How long have you worked with Macintosh computers? (More than 2 years / 1 to 2 years / Less than 1 year / No experience with Macs) - How hard is it to learn this? A typing test is already required.

Do you have knowledge of [employer] policies and procedures? (Yes / No) - How do I answer this? Of course I have some such knowledge. But I don't have much of the knowledge they want. And that stuff keeps changing anyway. And shouldn't they be training the person? Of course I said "Yes." I don't really get the point of this question, though.

Do you have experience working with college students in an academic setting? (Yes / No) - I consider classrooms and tutoring tables to be academic settings; that's not even what they want. This job is in a dean's office, admittedly on a college campus.

What kind of doof-balls have they hired in the past that make them want to ask these kinds of questions?

They do claim to prefer someone with a degree in the fine arts, so maybe they are confused about whether they want a left-brained or right-brained sort of person. So maybe that gets them into trouble?

I clearly think/work too hard on these things. But I don't know any other way to do them.

Comments

[sarcasticah.livejournal.com]

I really want to know more about the cranberry juice-date rape conviction thing!

[livingdeb.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much all I know. And the info seems too old to google.

cranberry juice diet lead to date rape convictions

[(Anonymous)]

It was a famous case from late 80's or early 90's around NYC (NJ as I recall) where 2 guys would pick up women in nightclubs, offering them "lines" to snort in their car. They were almost instantly comatose thereafter and were taken to various hotel rooms to be repeatedly raped & sodomized by both men on video. They never identified on this TV show about the case the actual name of the drug but PCP makes sense. They were caught because 1 victim was on a cranberry juice diet which negated the full effect of the drug and she was able to remember a plate on the rapists car which lead to the discovery of the video tapes in their possession. Cannot find squat about this case on Google though?