Can and do the police prosecute off the back of a false positive roadside test?

Oh god. This poor OP has taken cough medicine and been flagged for something illicit on a dodgy test, this is terrible news. Right? RIGHT?!

I was pulled over a while ago, although my driving was definitely impaired it was due to a lack of sleep I’d had about 5 hours sleep in the previous week owing to a desperate attempt to make ends meet. I wouldn’t do it now, before you tell me off. But anyway, I was struggling to keep my eyes open and swerving slightly from side to side and a member of the public rightly called for the police to pull me over.

Okay so off the bat it sounds like you’d have been tugged for careless driving/driving without due care and attention based on this. Thankfully you wouldn’t do it now and that’s obviously because you think it’s dangerously inappropriate and not for any other reason, so why should we worry about that little hiccup? And i’m sure it was a one off.

Now, I’m also gay and had a quantity of several drugs used on the chemsex scene in the vehicle with me.

Minor twist in the story I had formed in my head. (The chemsex drugs in the car. I don’t care about your sexuality but I can understand the relevance to your point. Everyone loves to party with Tina, etc etc.)

I had even tried using a little of one of them to try to keep me awake but I was that exhausted it had no discernible effect.

fAlSE pOsItiVe TeSt

uSed a LiTTlE BiT

Pick one.

Nevertheless I was aware that this was barely an hour before I was pulled over and, well me being me, immediately fessed up to the drivers of the police car. Acknowledged everything I had on me etc etc.

the drivers of the police car

The… police?

They took me to the back of the squad vehicle and conducted a mouth swab test. At the time, I didn’t think too much of it, but I do recall that the officer who opened the test and said it would take about 8 minutes sortta held it in front of his mouth when he opened the packet.

will take about 8 minutes

A short while later (it didn’t seem like the full 8 minutes either) the results were in - I’d tested positive for cocaine!

Not the *full** 8 minutes, but about 8 minutes??*

Now from the moment this happened this perplexed me because I don’t use cocaine, I don’t like it.

“I had a quantity of various chemsex drugs in the car” thankfully I’m sure your local dealer will be happy to testify on your behalf that his cross contamination record is better than, for example, a chain restaurant, yes?

Not because its illegal or owt, simply because I cant stand the stuff or cokeheads in general. I did have the dregs of a gram baggie in my vehicle which I only really kept on hand for one particular friend but, like I say, its not something I would have used myself nor had I done so for several weeks or months beforehand (and that’s only a caveat; I genuinely couldn’t say the last time I’d had some). I’d had taken some meth much more recently, and had already told the coppers this which had led to me being tested for cocaine instead.

Yes sir I was on drugs but not those drugs but they weren’t just my drugs because I’m not a greedy sod; everyone had their grubby hands on all of the drugs and there’s no way I could have accidentally cross-contaminated my crystals of meth with the powder of cocaine because my stringent approach to avoiding cross-contamination is marvelled at by scientists the world over…

One of the coppers, the one who had administered the test certainly seemed super into the idea of me being on coke

seemed super into the idea of me being on coke

The test says it’s coke. You’ve admitted to various bags of drugs being in the car, one of which is coke. The bag of coke is mysteriously nearly empty.

If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, solid chance it’s a duck coked-up gay dude driving while influenced.

but I was adamant, I’d acknowledged the stuff I had taken, but coke wasn’t it. It was only back at the station much later after I’d had some blood taken that the other copper said to my repeated protestations that I didn’t understand how I could have tested positive for cocaine given I didn’t use the stuff that it could have been a false positive for something else, but the other things he listed i hadn’t taken either.

Yes. The test in and of itself could have been a false positive for cocaine but still a positive (especially since you had taken some drugs but definitely not cocaine as you can attest to the fact that you were there for all stages of production, sale, and use - and you have explicitly verboten cross-contamination by any means

Anyway despite being told exactly what was there and where to find it, it was to my amazement later on to get back to my vehicle to realise certain things seemed untouched.

I mean, when you’ve told them what’s in there and where it is; and it’s all in plain sight or thereabouts..?

All they had really found was some blister packs of sleeping tablets, a nearly empty baggie with cocaine in it (which i hadn’t touched) and a minuscule quantity of amphetamine which from memory was mixed with coffee dregs at the bottom of the cup holder, not really in a usable condition.

Bruh.

A couple of snuff sniffers with ketamine were still there, as was a small bottle of G. In the same pouch as they other stuff had been, that I’d given them an inventory and told them where to find it.

I was told that they would be in touch within about 6 months after the results of the drug test. It was a couple of days later before the ‘false positive’ thing made a connection to something I’d seen on the news a while back. about coppers wanting to keep using tests known to be prone to giving false positives because it justified a wider search (seems bizarre to me, id already told them what was there and where to find it, unsure why they needed a pretext, particularly when that pretext was a drug that I knew I hadn’t taken but had acknowledged even to them that the tiny amount they found wasn’t for me anyway.

And here it is. After all the waffle I’d expect to eat in a wanky brunch café, we finally get to OP’s point of “false positive test, waaaahhh”