(NYT) – The White House recently endorsed monitoring sewage for evidence of drug use. Critics fear such efforts could violate privacy and stigmatize neighborhoods.

Sewage samples have been collected from high schools in Missouri and New Mexico, truck stops in Kentucky and at Super Bowl and Mardi Gras festivities in New Orleans. Legislators in at least five states have proposed bills to fund the practice.

Last month, the strategy got a boost from the Trump administration, when the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy praised its potential to show illegal drug use and trafficking across the country in real time. The administration has contracted with Biobot Analytics to help support the lab’s yearlong project testing sewage for 20 different substances at about 100 sites around the country. (Read More)