Professor and blogger Mark A.R. Kleiman sees this as a negative, but we applaud it.

The Justice Department has decided to stop testing new jail inmates for drug use.

It was a social science project begun by former Attorney General Edwin Meese under President Reagan.

The program, the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring program, or ADAM, tests newly arrested criminals entering jail for narcotics violations in 35 cities. Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d, in the Reagan administration, started it in 1986.

Cops and "criminal justice experts" (we put that in quotes because in our experience the term means one with a law enforcement leaning-- for some reason we rarely if ever hear criminal defense lawyers referred to as "justice experts") want to keep the program and argue that it's a useful tool in the drug war.

"This is a real loss," said Mark A. R. Kleiman, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Los Angeles, who is editor of The Drug Policy Analysis Bulletin. "Closing down ADAM indicates a complete lack of seriousness about getting a handle on the drug abuse problem in this country."

We think it's a privacy invasion to the inmates. They committed a crime, they go in to do their time. Why should the Government be entitled to their bodily fluids? Sorry, but we don't think a social studies project is a good enough reason.

Law enforcement officials and criminal justice experts criticized ending the program, saying it was ....widely credited for tracking the rise and fall of the crack epidemic and detecting the beginning of the methamphetamine epidemic on the West Coast.

The Justice Department cites a lack of funding for cutting the program. The "criminal justice experts" think the Office of National Drug Control Policy should have lobbied Congress harder for more money.

Why is the Government spending so much money --$23 million--on social science projects and surveys instead of on providing treatment and alternatives to prison for drug users? Why are inmates being forced to be statistical guinea pigs?