Drug tests exonerate punk rocker
Don Bolles, arrested in Newport Beach on suspicion of possessing a date-rape drug, is freed after analysis shows it was only soap.
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Bolles, 50, the legendary drummer for the Germs, spent three days in jail after Newport Beach police said they found GHB, the date-rape drug, inside a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap in Bolles’ 1968 Dodge van.
Police ran a field test on the yellowish goop after stopping Bolles for a broken taillight on April 4.
But a more sophisticated analysis by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department crime lab detected no GHB in the soap, officials said Monday. As a result, all charges against Bolles will be dismissed, a spokeswoman for the Orange County district attorney’s office said.
Meanwhile, the makers of Dr. Bronner’s announced that other liquid soaps, including Neutrogena and Tom’s of Maine, also can mistakenly register positive for GHB with the field test kit used by Newport Beach police.
Bronner’s officials said they experimented with the ODV-brand NarcoPouch 928 test kit and various soaps over the weekend and would post a video of the results on their website next week.
“Police departments nationwide should immediately stop using the ODV field test for GHB,” Bronner’s president David Bronner said.
A spokesman for Armor Forensics, which manufactures the ODV test, said he wasn’t familiar with the kit and couldn’t immediately comment.
Arthur Magazine 