THE waiting room could be mistaken for that of a clinic: It has an overhead television set and in front of it, red plastic chairs laid out in rows.

The people sitting on them are a motley crew of respectably and sloppily dressed folk. Some look blanched from anxiety. When their turn comes, they shuffle, not into a doctor's office, but into a toilet. Each person is there to take a leak - one that determines if he or she can later walk free. Almost without exception, they already know the outcome.

A former pub waiter said of his being stopped in July last year at HarbourFront after a trip to Batam: 'When I was told to take the test by a plainclothes officer, I knew I'd surely test positive, so I was prepared to go in.'

The 20-something said he had taken Ecstasy tablets in a disco on the Indonesian island.

The Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) is famous for its drug busts. Less known about - but no less a part of its enforcement of Singapore's strict drug laws - are its powers to order instant urine tests on those suspected to have taken drugs.

It has run more than half a million urine tests in the last three years. These are conducted in rooms in the six police divisional headquarters across the island.

The CNB, revealing its urine-testing procedures for the first time, said the centres test two groups of people - walk-ins and former drug abusers recently released from rehabilitation.

The walk-ins are those just hauled up in drug raids that take place day and night, while the second group, which numbers around 2,000, must report for routine urine tests for up to two years. Tests take place up to thrice a week to ensure they stay 'clean'. Officers track down those who skip the tests. Less than 5 per cent do.

Those who turn up for the routine tests pass their identification cards to officers. They then sit down and wait for their turn to answer nature's call.

Each is escorted by an officer of the same gender into the toilet, where, in full view of the officer, he or she urinates into a plastic bottle resembling Brand's chicken essence containers, only smaller.

While hardly the most pleasant of jobs, officers watch to ensure 'evidential integrity', one of them said, referring to cases in which suspects tried to cheat - for instance, by mixing their urine with water from the toilet.

A former delivery driver aged 47, who reports weekly for these routine tests, said of being watched: 'No lah, it's not embarrassing. Both of us are men.'

After the sample is obtained, it is put into a machine to test for traces of four major drug groups, including heroin, cannabis and synthetic drugs like Ecstasy.

This is the instant urine test, which tells the officers in 15 minutes if they should arrest the person or let him go.

Seven in every 100 people tested get arrested following routine tests these days, a far cry from the mid-1990s when every other person tested was nabbed.

The whole process takes less than half an hour for those who are clean and cooperative, as are the vast majority of those reporting for routine tests.

An officer said those who are tested regularly are quiet and well-behaved, but those newly ensnared in the drug dragnet may not be. Handcuffed, they may come in anxious or drunk - and angry. And then there is the delicate matter of coaxing them to produce three small bottles of urine. The officer said: 'Some hold it in and some will pee in their pants while handcuffed in the waiting room.'

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