Over at i09, Annalee Newitz blogs about Lewis Casey, a Saskatchewan college student who built a home chemistry lab and was arrested by police who thought he was brewing meth. A few days later, the police realized that the chemistry major wasn’t manufacturing drugs but kept him in the clink anyway because the lab could allegedly be used for making bombs. From i09:
On December 24, Casey was finally released into his parents’ custody, pending a trial to determine whether he was building what police called “improvised explosive devices.” Yesterday Casey’s lawyer told local journalists:
My client is a very intelligent young man . . . he’s very keen in chemistry, a very curious young person and very capable, very knowledgeable in the area and he was always curious with regard to chemistry, chemical compounds, chemical reactions, that kind of thing. So from my client’s point of view, it’s completely innocent insofar as he had no intention of creating any explosives or explosive devices. As people probably know, anything in your house can constitute or be used in chemical or explosive devices, including sugar and cleaning compounds, Mr. Clean, bleach, detergents, all those sorts of things.
“Teen with Home Chemistry Lab Arrested for Meth, Bombs”