Robbery Suspect Tracked by GPS and Killed
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Prescription painkiller overdoses used to hover around the number of overdoses from heroin. In a few short years, they increased sixfold.
http://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/public-health...
http://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/PainkillerOverdoses/index.html
http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/topics-in-brief/prescr...
http://www.drugabuse.gov/about-nida/noras-blog/2013/07/presc...
"Lojack in everything" is really cool, could push us towards a theftless society. We still have a lot of work to help people escape drug dependency, though.
Planet Money had an episode on Suboxone, a pill used to treat addiction, that was a pretty alarming look inside the insanity of US drug policy: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/07/31/157665908/episode-...
They see Suboxone as a sort of "miracle drug," a few people object to that description: http://www.thefix.com/content/trapped-suboxone
Either way, the podcast does a great job at illustrating just how complicated and intimately political pharmaceutical manufacturing has become.
How long until people use these devices to manipulate police officers into shooting who they want?
Placing the trackers where you want to misdirect the po-po is another option, of course, but it seems it was pulling a weapon, not having the tracker, that prompted the shooting.
Not that being approached by uniformed or plainsclothed police under other circumstances might not elicit a similar response.
What sort of response did this prompt?
Why "one or more"? Is this unknown to the police or do the police just not report such things to the press?
Actually, the smokeless powder in handgun ammo pretty much doesn't finish burning up by the time the bullet exits, resulting in a muzzle flash problem at nighttime, and that burning powder ought to do a good job of burning up any chemical taggant. It's probably telling the gun grabbers have never seriously suggested this (vs. tagging powder or brass).
Then there's the traceability problem. Lots of ammo is bought in bulk, especially by police departments, it would cost vastly more to get customized ammo for each officer, be a total nightmare to try to get it to designated officers and keep it isolated to them. You can't realistically demand an officer never hand a spare magazine to another, especially in a firefight, and ammo is generally a fungible item.
It would never work in a civilian context, it would be vastly more expensive as noted above, we'd boycott any manufacturer who tried such a stunt, and since in the US we buy the vast majority of ammo it would stick.
Also note US civilian ammo production for all types is above 12 billion rounds per year, and I've read rimfire ammo (e.g. .22 LR, not considered by almost everyone as suitable for self-defense) is only 3-4 billion of that. Those numbers strongly suggest taggant approaches are impractical.
Simply because it's a great story on some related issues, I'll again recommend Neal Stephenson's "Jipi and the Paranoid Chip":