Nobody Beats The Orignal Whizzinator®

So Minnesota Vikings running back Onterrio Smith has been caught going through airport security packing The Original Whizzinator, a device that's sold to folks trying to game drug tests.

From the Boston Globe's account:

Police at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport questioned Smith April 21 after a search of his bag discovered vials of white powder, according to a police report.

Smith told officers it was dried urine used in conjunction with a device called "The Original Whizzinator." The officer who filed the report wrote that Smith "told me that it was dried urine for making a clean urine test." In addition, he had a bottle of pills labeled "cleansing formula."

Smith told police he was taking the vials to his cousin. The Star Tribune first reported the story yesterday.

Whole thing here. Curiously, 'twas a tube of toothpaste that reportedly led to the search of Smith's bag.

Now you don't have to be a dried-urine fetishist (though it helps) to find interest in this story. What I want to know is who sourced this story in the first place? Shouldn't those Transportation Security Administration files be, you know, confidential or something?

It's not clear from any of the reports I've read how reporters learned of the incident so, like Mycroft Holmes, I'm left to cogitate on the matter. Think about it from the good ol' cui bono angle: Who benefits?

The NFL looks bad, what with players circumventing their drug policy. Smith looks bad, coming up with the least convincing celebrity cover story since Rod "The Wad" Stewart claimed he checked into that hospital for simple exhaustion. And the TSA looks bad because instead of stopping Mohammed Atta wannabes they're sniffing vials of dried urine (just add…what, water? Snapple brand beverages?).

So that leaves only one suspect: The folks behind The Original Whizzinator, who have gained arguably the greatest product placement since Reese's Pieces were gobbled up by E.T. faster than he drank whatever brand of beer he guzzled to comedic effect in the worst highest-grossing flick of all time.

We salute you, Whizzinator makers, not for the product you have created (about which we know nothing personally) but for the placement you have made.

Jacob Sullum looked at on-the-job drug tests here.

And I looked away here when Clarence Thomas wrote a majority opinion for the Supreme Court upholding urine tests in schools.