Breathalyzers: Really, Really Complicated

Breathalyzers work on a simple principle: Alcohol is absorbed into the lungs and present in breath. But the machines that actually measure this alcohol level are really, really complicated. Tune in and learn more in this podcast.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me? Is always this
Charles W. Sober as a judge Bryant? Yeah, yeah, Actually

(00:25):
when I say sober as a judge, I mean it
in relation to that one judge from Gwynette County who
was busted on the news for being drunk in the
middle of the day on the on the not the stand.
Where would he be what's that called? Uh Chambers? Now
that's no, No, it was that the It was a
a bar. Oh it'll like, you know, like during the day,
like for lunch, and I remember on the promo for whatever,

(00:48):
you know, news expose, a local news expose they had.
It was, um, he not only passed the bar, he
stopped and drank at it. I thought you were gonna
say he was drinking while judging. Well that was the implication,
is that he was doing the morning session out to lunch,
get drunk, and then going back and doing the afternoon session. Crocked.

(01:10):
The guy thinks it's like nineteen sixty one or something.
I would actually love for my judge to be slightly hammered.
I don't know, man, because you know what, he's a
mean drunk yeah in trouble. Yeah, exactly precisely. Um So
I guess that's as good as set up as any. Right, Well,
I mean, why don't you want the judge drinking. It's
not just because you want him to, you know, pass

(01:34):
a sensible sentence, right, It's also he's got to get
from the bar back to the courthouse, and on route
he could take out an entire family. Yeah, and I
doubt if the judges got his rob on on his bicycle,
although you shouldn't be driving a bicycle really drunk down
the road either. And plus I don't think they're allowed
to wear the robes outside of the court. I would

(01:54):
wear mine everywhere. I know you would, Chuck, And you
wear nothing underneath it, right, Chuck. Give us some stats.
There's some pretty add stats from two thousand eight that
I know you have on hand, Yes, Josh, if you're
talking about traffic accidents that result in death. In two
thousand and eight, there were um a little more than
thirty seven thousand total deaths by traffic accident, and about

(02:18):
close to fourteen thousand of those were alcohol related. Right,
that's thirty seven percent of all traffic related deaths were
because of alcohol. Yeah, and it's kind of hovered in
that range I noticed of the past few years. Um,
but I went back just for curiosity's sake, and in
of deaths were alcohol related, and there were twice as many.

(02:41):
There were twenty six thousand alcohol related deaths by you know,
vehicular means. I wonder though, if it's not just because
of more driving DRAWNK I'm sure that's something to do
with it. But if that it's because there were fewer
SUVs on the road as well, it's probably that would
skew the ratio. Probably not as advanced testing more lax.

(03:03):
I think back then you could literally have an open
beer in the car if you weren't drunk, just drive
holding the beer and you're like, it's my first one, right,
what are you gonna do? You just take a couple
of SIPs while the cop pulls you over. That's a
the days, Well, Chuck, we are not a teetotal or society.
We tried that once, it was called prohibition. It didn't
work very well, right, you know, the mentality behind prohibition

(03:26):
was alcoholics have to have alcohol. The rest of us
who are in alcoholics don't have to have alcohol, so
we can reasonably give it up for the benefit of
the alcoholics. Right. It didn't work, So we are you know,
we we know everybody likes to take a drink here there,
So there is a certain amount of alcohol that you're
allowed to have. I think in most states it's a

(03:47):
zero point zero eight. I think it's every state now.
But how to test that? Yes, there's a couple of ways.
There's a few ways, um, blood urine. But I think
you could make a really excellent case that a police officer,
um removing a sample of blood or collecting the urine

(04:07):
of a driver he suspects as drunk, would you know,
reasonably violate the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure,
as well as a couple of human rights. Exactly, you
don't want some cops stabbing you with a hypodermic, right,
but your breath is expelled without any expectation of privacy,

(04:30):
which I think is why we have the breathalyzer and
why it's in use. Talk about the breathalyzer truck, which
you could also call the most confounded contraptions ever known
to man. They're way more advanced than I thought they
ever were. I thought there was a little gnome inside
that was like smells like Budweiser and lots of it,

(04:52):
and then no, yeah, no, it's like some of these,
some of these contraptions, there's um a few we're going
to talk about. There's three main types, but some of
them seem almost um Rube Goldberg ask like total you
would expect at some point there's a candle that that's
going to burn, a stream that drops an anvil, it
hits a catapult that like she's kitten somewhere, like that's

(05:13):
one of the processes. Yeah. I just want to point
out too before we move on that the point oh a.
You know, they've done test over the years and they
found that point oh four actually impairs a human being. Yeah,
the Medical Association says point oh five five. So I
just think I find it odd that that wouldn't be
the limit that they would say you can get a

(05:33):
little impaired, and that's fine, just go ahead and get
behind the wheel, but just not this level of impaired.
It just seems we should be blink really hard and
frequently while you're driving. I guess that just shows that
we are not a teetotal society. So they do understand,
like you might have a drink at a bar, having
dinner and then get in your car and go home,
and that's okay. I guess that's what they say. Yeah,

(05:55):
So I mean, at the very least, you can't be
arrested for it, although I understand if it's right around
point oh eight, it's at the cops discretion. Yeah, And
whether or not even get a breathalyzer, yeah, because not
all of them have them. And then I think all
of them do the field sobriety tests first, because the
breathalyzers sort of a pain to get going, so right,
but I can do the test. I think the presence

(06:17):
the fact that the breathalyzer exists, if you do a
field sobriety test and arrest the person without giving him
a breathalyzer, I think that that's probably frequently acquitted, is it,
I would think so? Yeah, And I've never been I've
never blown into a breathalyzer, never been even pulled over
for alcohol. Good buddy, Moving on, so let's talk about

(06:38):
the breathalyzer um from this article written by Craig Freud
and Reach PhD, the only PhD who writes for the
site Your buddy, Right, No, I don't know. Oh, I thought, oh,
that's right, Tom, Tom chif he has a PhD in
School of Hard Knocks. Um. I was surprised to find
out how old these things are. In the nineteen forties,

(06:59):
they were testing the blood alcohol content by the breath. Yeah,
they were called drunk a meters back then. They really were.
And it had some guy with like a crumpled fedora
and like stars popping around his face. They really were,
though they were called drunken meters. And I believe that
they did not have like a nose on there that
turned more red as you blew into it was like

(07:21):
you know, if you if you blew three pink elephates,
you're going downtown, buddy. But yeah, that that was when
they were first used. But the actual breathalyzer trademark breathalyzer
was invented in fifty four by Dr Borkenstein. Yes, from
the Indiana State Police, right, yeah, And um that was
another thing. I learned that the Indiana State Police have

(07:43):
doctors on their payroll. Yeah, I guess so, inventor doctors. Yeah. Um.
And the premise of all of the um breath analyzing machines.
I don't know what that that category would be called.
That sounds right, breath analyzing machine, breath alcohol content, breath

(08:04):
analyzing machines, a breaking bubble, right, a piping feature. Um.
They they all work on the same principle, and that's
that alcohol is actually absorbed into um, the lungs, yeah,
and in your blood. Yeah, Like you drink. You take
a drink of alcohol, and you know, if you're a

(08:25):
reasonable adult and you've been drinking for a little while,
you know that it doesn't like, you don't digest that alcohol,
and it doesn't like change into maple syrup once it
hits your body. It stays as alcohol in your blood
to be delicious if it changes into communile syrup. Right.
And there's actually a predictable ratio between the blood alcohol content,
which is what screws you up and makes you like

(08:46):
blink really heavy and drive into other cars, and the
aviolar content, which is what's in your lungs and your breath. Right,
And it's a one is the ratio. So if you
have um milli leaders of alcohol in your breath. You've

(09:07):
got one milli leader in your blood stream. That's the formula.
That's the basis for all this, right, all breathalyzers or
breath alcohol monitoring machine. So so considered this right there,
just the fact that we're measuring breath, we're actually measuring
a reflection of the blood alcohol content. Okay, that's that's
step one removed from actuality. Yes, okay, but again remember

(09:31):
the fact that breathalyzers exist um shows a deep and
continual um commitment by the state to protect human rights,
individual rights, and protect human lives. Right that that too,
of course, Chuck. So let's talk about the first one,
the breathalyzers, the Kleenex, the aspirin, the xerox of the

(09:53):
breath analyzing machines. Uh, Josh, that is the I don't
know if it's the most common. I couldn't get any
stats on which you know. I think Atlanta uses the
infrared one. Actually, do you have like an inn at
the d a's office in Atlanta? You know a lot
about Atlantic that I do. The breathalyzer, Josh uses a
chemical reaction that basically makes it change color. So what

(10:18):
happens is you you blow into and I'm glad I'm
explaining this one because this is the only one I
truly understood. I got um the fuel cell one. All right, Well,
hopefully someone can come in and explain what the infrared
one means. Maybe Matt. Who's guest producing Matt, Matt, are
you still with that band? He says, yes, Blinds and scissors.

(10:38):
Uh so, Josh, the breath the actual breathalyzer. What you
do is you blow into it. There are two glass
vials with a chemical reaction mixture and then a system
of photo cells. Why is that funny? I don't know. Uh.
So you breathe into the device and it bubbles up,
and the bubbles to a mixture of sulfuric acid, tassium dichromate,

(11:02):
silver nitrate, and water. Right, so that you have reddish
orange dichromate. Right, that's key. And when you breathe into
that and it's bubbling it, actually the alcohol in it
converts it to a green chromium ion. Right. Yeah, It
changes the color to green depending on how much alcohol
you've had. It varies on how much color change takes place. Right. Okay,

(11:26):
so you're with us so far, right, are you seeing?
Like how how difficult this is getting So we've converted
alcohol content to a color, right, Okay, go ahead, Chuck. So,
like I said, the degree of color change is related
to how much alcohol you expel for your breath. So
what happens then, is it it goes over to the

(11:47):
photo cell system and there's an electric current that causes
a needle to move up. Okay, So the color remember this,
it's gone from reddish orange, not even red or orange.
Just to further comp it's a reddish orange that goes
to green, which is weird. The wavelength is measured to
determine how green that green ion is because Chuck, remember

(12:10):
the butterfly Wings episode. Like like color exists in different wavelengths,
it's how it's differentiated. So there's something measuring the wavelength, right,
and then it's comparing the green to the reddish orange
the original unreacted solution. Yes, And that's what's connected to
the meter. Because the cop doesn't just hold it up
like a pregnancy test, thank god, and say that looks

(12:32):
sort of green to me at least in this like
yellowish green, rather than as he's holding it next to
your green car, you know. So it's actually hooked up
to a device an electric current moves the needle, and
then the cop then rotates a knob to bring the
needle back to its original zero. Reading is what I

(12:52):
gather and how much he turns that knob. The knob
has the point oh one point oh two, and that
will tell tell him or her, if it's a female cop,
how much alcohol you have in your breath. So if
you see, if you take a breathalyzer and you see
a cop turning a knob and shaking head like wow,
and he keeps turning it and turning it, you're probably

(13:14):
in trouble. You're crocked. You're crocked exactly. So um, the
blood alcohol content has been converted into a color. The
color is compared to the original unreacted color. That disparity
has turned into an electrical pulse which moves the needle,
and you move the needle back to zero by turning
a knob. In the amount of degree the knob that's

(13:36):
required to get it back to zero is how drunk
you are. And then the basketballs on top of the
mouse and it's trapped. That's a great recap to by
the way, thank you. That was That was the only
one I really actually understood too. Well. This should be
fun then, because up next Josh is the intoxilizer, and
that's the one that uses infrared spectron spectroscopy. So not

(14:00):
only can you convert um blood alcohol content where your
breath alcohol content into a color, you can shoot infrared
light at it and measure how much is absorbed and
then figure out how much alcohol is in the blood
using that standard ratio. Right, Yes, And that's possible because

(14:22):
molecules vibrate constantly, and when you shoot in for a
light into a molecule, it will the vibration will change
and the bonds, the literal chemical bonds will actually change, right,
And we know how much, like say, um, a carbon
to oxygen bond in ethanol alcohol, which is what is

(14:42):
in our bloodstream, right, how much will be absorbed in
how much would be reflected back? Right? Yeah? Okay, so
once again you're dealing with wavelengths, right, yeah, So checking
this one, it's UM. I strongly strongly recommend uh people
who are listening to this podcast go onto the site
afterward and look at the batalizer article because there's some

(15:04):
really great illustrations that I wouldn't have been able to
get this without looking at these um But this one
looks kind of like a nitrous ox side chamber, but
with two holes in it, right, Um, And then at
the end there's a Courts lamp. So the Courts lamp
generates an infrared beam that shoots through the nitrous ox

(15:25):
side chamber. Right, you blow into the top hole and
your breath is in there, and it exhales through the
other hole right onto a spinning wheel. Right. Well, no,
it goes, it goes through the infrared beam, and then
it goes onto this, Yeah, this filter wheel, and each
of the there's different lenses in this filter wheel polarized too.

(15:47):
I guess just let certain colored ions passed through, right,
I know, the the different um I guess the different
infrared beams make it through this color wheel hit a
photo cell, which then interprets these things the wavelengths into
an electrical pulse again, and then that ultimately hits a

(16:10):
microprocessor where the information is translated into the blood alcohol
content the percentage. Could they make it any more difficult?
They could. I think the breath lizer may be more
difficult than that one, more complicated. Yeah, this one just
seems like Holy cow, because there's like a filter wheel
and infrared light. Yeah, but I think they're equally complicated.

(16:31):
And that's what they use in Atlanta. This is the
one they use, the intoxicator, the intoxicalizer, the eradicator. The
intoxicator would be you and I. Did you see the
kids in the hall on the soup recently? No, they
reunited for the first time. Yeah they did. Ah, they're
back with the show. Yeah, to promote mini series or something.

(16:53):
They don't. I think it's on HBO or so, although
they got nothing on the State. Yeah, you're a big
State fan, aren't you love this guy? You love David Wayne,
I do in came Marino. Those are my boys. So
josh uh, that's pretty much it for the intoxicalizer, right
bing bang boom done. Uh. Now this is the the
Alco Sensor. I love that there's two, the three, and

(17:16):
the four. I guess the one and the two went
the way of the Dodo, right. Yeah, they just said
everybody was drunk all the time, version one and version
two or the drunk a meters of the yea. Then
they changed the name two Alco sensor. And luckily the
Alco sensor UM is perfected now and it uses fuel
cell technology. It's kind of the same thing that they're

(17:38):
talking about for cars, which is crazy. It's pretty much
the exact same thing. You have a positive post and
a negative post, and then between you have a um
an electro light, which is just basically a thin film, right. Yeah,
that the poster platinum electrodes for all you chemistry nerds
out there, right, so this one has, uh, the the

(17:58):
suspected drunk driver low through a UM the say, the
negative post, that the platinum negative post, and this oxidizes
the alcohol present in the breath, right yes, and that
produces protons, electrons, and something called acetic acid, right So,
but the the acetic acid is actually vinegar, so it's

(18:19):
actually producing vinegar in that weird okay that these things
stink after a few uses. Um. The the really important
part here is that it strips the ethanol, I believe
the hydrogen, specifically of its electrons. Now, electrons have this
thing called electron flow where they naturally gravitate from negative

(18:39):
side a negative post of like a chattery, to the
positive and the electron flow, this movement of electrons is
actually where we get our electricity from. This is exactly
how a fuel cell works. In a in a car
that runs on hydrogen. Um, so you direct these the
electro light won't let the electrons go through, Okay, So

(19:00):
these negatively charged electrons are run through a circuit. In
the middle of the circuit, you have, um, this electrical
pulse that's there, this electrical electrical meter that's reading the
pulse the current right as it passes through to the
positive side to rejoin its friends. And however, I guess
the more electrons there are present, the more blood alcohol

(19:23):
there is. So this this meter converts you know, a
high voltage to you know the equivalent B A C. Right,
So the more alcohol is oxidized, basically the great of
the current. And then the microprocessor reads this current and
says being drunk, right or point oh eight? Yeah, this
is actually the simplest one, you think, So, yeah, that's

(19:47):
for my money, buddy. I'm going with the what is
this one called again and toxiclizer because it sounds the coolest.
I'm going with the gnome. That's the simplest one. This
is drink. Um. I got a couple of things here. Um.
Obviously we're not encouraging anyone to drink and drive. Ever, no,
I think that's really important because they do say that

(20:09):
even one drink can impair you. But they do have
some They floated some stats out there about how much
you can supposedly drink and and still not blow a
d u. I yeah, they say a hundred and eighty
pound man, which show me a hundred and eighty pound man.
Come on, you gotta get above two bills if you're
a dude. Yeah, I think so too. I don't. I

(20:32):
think the trend is going the other way though, jeans
and everything. Well, I'm gonna have a shirt that says
real men way two hundred pounds or more. I'll bet
we'd get one on our Facebook page that we do.
So a hundred and eighty pound dude can supposedly be
at point eight after four drinks, but they don't give
an amount of time either. Yeah, that if I have

(20:53):
four drinks, and what kind of drinks if I have four?
So let's say that it's that standard like one shot,
you know, one number of ounces of wine and then
like I think of wine or a twelve ounce of
beer or a shot is supposedly all the same. Dude,
if I have four shots, yeah, I'm I'm definitely impaired.
You don't want me getting behind the wheel of a
car four shots in an hour, especially exactly. But I

(21:16):
think this should be I think they say, like the
cop that I read an interview with from Atlanta said
that he says, if you can stay within one drink
per hour, you're probably gonna be okay, and you shouldn't
sweat it, right. And I've also adopted drinking a glass
of water while drinking a drink. Oh yeah, because it's

(21:38):
it's not necessarily the dilution, although I suspect that that
does have an effect. Um. But number one, you're expelling
alcohol more frequently because you're drinking a lot of water.
What three urine? Yeah, yeah, but that doesn't change your
blood alcohol hold on. And then secondly you're drinking, you're
spreading it out over more time because you're not just
drinking alcohol the whole time. You drinking alcohol and water.

(21:59):
So that's say, doubling the amount of time it takes
to finish a drink. So in theory, you could play
boggle while you drank and as long as it took
more times. But I wouldn't play boggle. You couldn't thinking
men tavern, they have all those games there you No,
I'm not plugging them. It's just a boat local bar
that has like board games, so it's fun. Do you

(22:20):
want to give the address? No, I don't. It's on
College Avenue indicator. Um. But the same cop also verified
what I thought, which is they always do a field
sobriety test first, which is I mean there's different variations
the count. Your count better do the ABC's backwards. Yeah,
I can't do that right now, dead sober, there's no

(22:41):
way you could. I think you should right now. No,
I've tried it. I know it starts with Z and uh.
Here's another tip too, is you should never ever sing
the alphabet song. If you're pulled over by a cop
and they asked you to say the alphabet, not a
good move would singing the song like people? I think

(23:03):
it wasn't that judge, but some public figure recently did that.
I think one of the like when I Na Mel
Gibson sang the Alpha that song. Uh, and Josh. Of
course there are other And like I said, we're not
telling you how to beat an alcohol test. No. I
think the point here is for for this stuff we're
about to talk about. We're talking about the the aviolar

(23:25):
concentration the amount of alcohol concentrated in your breath. It's
not constant. It depends on what phase of the breath
you exhale. Um. And I think people who are um
a little drunk or drunk and are thinking like this
could use this to their advantage. But at the same time,
cops might use the opposite to their advantage as well.
And I think it's smart to know, you know, so

(23:47):
you don't get an unnecessary beef against you well, and
it provides it results in an inaccurate reading, and you
want accuracy. Whether it's you trying to influence it or
the cop trying to influence it, they can be influenced.
Like so, hyperventilating, Josh, will lower You're reading. This feels wrong,
it does, but it actually will lower. They've done studies

(24:09):
and if you hyperventilate for twenty seconds, it will actually
decrease the reading by ten. And let's say if you
ran up a couple of flights of stairs they and
then blow in. They said it will decrease it by
twenty because it's a more shallow breath. And I think
that the breath at the bottom of the lungs is
richer in alcohol content. That's why the cops says, blow

(24:30):
harder and deeper when you're blowing on the breathalyzer, right,
That's that's I I have a problem with anybody trying
to UM, trying to get out of you know, breathalyzer reading. UM.
But I also have a problem with UM a police
officer trying to jack up in a breathalyzer reading. And
apparently if you if you breathe really deeply, really hard,

(24:53):
you exhale from the bottom of your lungs, the reading
can be UM one and a half times more with
the actual blood alcohol content is which is significant when
you're talking about like point oh eight percent or you know,
seven point one percent or something like that. Yeah. Uh.
The only problem with these as far as someone out
there thinking, you know what, I'll just I can hyperventilate

(25:15):
beat this is you forget that the cop is there
at all times. You can't hyperventilate in front of you.
Do you're gonna get shot in the back. So what
you're probably gonna end up doing is breathing just like
they say to and you'll be pinched. I think ultimately, though,
all numbers can be tossed out the window. If you're

(25:35):
a driver, you know, if you're impaired, if you shouldn't
be driving. Yeah, don't and um, don't believe any of
those myths about pennies in your mouth or mints or
onions or in nothing will affect your blood alcoholic content.
The MythBusters blew that wide open. Snopes blew it wide open.
Common sense blows up wide open. And uh, you can

(25:56):
also I checked into it. You can buy a breathalyzer.
They have consumer models, right, and they have some that
are hooked up to the ignition of your car. Yeah,
the one lote of you start. Yeah, but apparently you
can get the top rated one is about a hundred
and fifty bucks. So if you're that big of a
lush that you want to purchase one of these and
carried around, or maybe you're being really responsible. I mean,

(26:16):
it depends on how you look at it. Yeah, I
finish the sentence. Well, then you can buy one for
a buck fifty, keep in your purse or your or
your pocket, and then before you leave the bar, just
blow into it and say, you know what, I should
weigh a little while. That's so, that's breathalyzers. And again
we would strongly recommend you go well, we strongly recommend

(26:36):
you don't drink and drive and um. Secondly, we strongly
recommend you go onto how stuff works dot com and
look up breathalyzers. You're gonna find some pretty You're you're
gonna find some illustrations that will make you go, Okay,
I get it, nitrous ocks side charge, I know it. Right. Then,
all right, Chuck, what do we have? Do we have
listener mail? Yeah, well let's do the listener mail chime.

(27:02):
And now let's do a little bit of plugging first. Okay,
plug it south By Southwest. Yes, go to H T
T P colon slash slash panel picker one word dot
s x s W dot com, sign up and you
can vote for us. We're under interactive panels stuff you

(27:24):
should know. Yeah, and it'll walk you through. You know,
we're trying to get to south By Southwest next march
on a panel and visit the fine folks of Austin,
Texas and perhaps do a trivia been there too if
we can, If we can make the panel, so if
you click on that and click your little thumbs up
to vote for it, it'll say, oh, you haven't signed
up yet, and it'll walk you through the sign up procedure.

(27:44):
And I need to point out that will not put
you on some spam list. You won't get emails. You know,
they swear up and down. Yeah, they promise, it's just
so they can verify that you're a real person and
all that. And then, uh, we are on Facebook and Twitter.
We're no Steve Slater, but we're worth following. Uh and
um KIVA www dot k I v a dot org

(28:06):
slash team slash stuff. You should know we have our
own micro lending team. If you want to learn a
little bit about that, And if you have questions or
you're confused about micro lending and why we do it,
you can read our two part blog post why we
Lend on Cuba s Team s Y s K. Yeah,
Josh wrote a really great long form too part thing

(28:29):
that's blog post. It really spells out CIVA and everything
you need to know about it, and well, thank you. Um,
I almost forgot chuckers. Um. We have a very robust
T shirt gallery. Um, not just the winning designs, but
a lot of the ones that came close not so close,
basically pretty much all of them. I think there's like
ten fifteen that aren't up there, but there's a bunch

(28:53):
more and it's like looking into the minds of like
stuff you should know listeners. It's really interesting. There's some
cool designs on they see him go to um let's
see how stuff works dot com slash t shirt pictures
and it's te hyphened shirt hyphen pictures dot htm and
that will take you to it. Awesome. Yeah, it's a

(29:15):
listener mail. Finally, Okay, Josh, I'm gonna call this love
from Jamaica. Remember how in the in the grow Houses
one when we talked about I thought Jamaica might be
the highest rate of marijuana consumption. Yeah, it turned out
it was Papua New Guinea. Yeah, and then Africa, all
over Africa. Um. So this is from Shoonnari in Jamaica.

(29:35):
She says. Here in Jamaica, we don't have indoor grow houses,
but more outside cultivation. People grow it outside in deep,
overgrown bush country, far away from prying eyes, and also
in the mountains where people don't venture much. They grow
with them amongst regular crops like bananas and coffee and
sugar to mask the appearance from the sky. And they're
normally family operations or local, locally based where the whole neighborhood,

(29:58):
so to speak, we'll keep a watch out for cops,
and the whole neighborhood benefits in some way from the
influx of cash that the marijuana provides plus free weed,
I guess. So. Uh. Sometimes the local law enforcement will
raid these growing operations, but the growers still will set
traps for them that will hamper their willingness to even
go into these areas. So you got like a badger trap,

(30:19):
and they're like a tiger pit. Yeah, cops like, I
ain't going in there. Yeah, you see one cop fall
into a tiger pit, you're not gonna follow him. Well,
listen to this. One trap I saw on the news
sometime back. Takes the form of hidden water spikes. So
they'll basically make a muddy pond and grow marijuana on
top of this. And in these ponds there are solid

(30:40):
paths and there are also paths with spikes sticking up.
That's a tiger pit. Oh, is that what it is? Yeah,
it's a hole with like that. You dig a pit
and then at the bottom there's these sharpened sticks all
sticking up, so when you fall in, you're in deep,
deep trouble and my blessing. I thought a tiger pit
was like a pit with a tiger in it. It

(31:02):
may have a tiger in it, but it's in pale
line steaks. I wouldn't last five minutes in the Jamaican
Jamaica in no way. Uh. In general though, because of
our Rastafarian heritage, where marijuana is part of the religious practice,
marijuana was illegal but decriminalized for domestic use. So as
a result, seeing someone smoking pot in the open is

(31:22):
not strange, but it can land you a fine. So
this comes from Shinari. I think I said SHARONI didn't
I Shari in Jamaica? He said, CHARONI doesn't ring a
bell all right, So thank you Shinari for listening to Yeah,
uh yeah, I didn't know we had any listeners. And no,
she's not in Jamaica. That's her home of Jamaica. Now

(31:45):
she lives everything, does she really? Okay? Well, thanks Shinnari.
We appreciate you keeping the home fires burning down there
in Jamaica. Do you have any stories about tiger pits
or other kind of clever traps or rude group? Goldberg
esque Divide says, we want to hear about him, right, Chuck.
We want to see schematics. Actually, you can email them

(32:06):
to us at stuff podcast. At how stuff works dot com.
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(32:27):
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