The War on Drugs

Ian Lovett, reporting for the NYT on a college student who was locked up by the DEA for four days in a cell with no food, no water, no toilet, and no human contact:

But for Mr. Chong, the celebration ended in a Kafkaesque nightmare inside a San Diego Drug Enforcement Administration holding cell, where he said he was forgotten for four days, without food or water.

To survive, Mr. Chong said he drank his own urine, hallucinated and, at one point, considered how to take his own life. By the time agents found him on the fifth day and called paramedics, he said he thought he could be dead within five minutes.

★ Friday, 4 May 2012