later confirmed what simon already knew. the pills were just vitamins. now a new first-of-its-kind study shows simon and his wife are among tens of thousands of americans every year wrongly implicated by field drug tests. our primary mission is to identify sources of error in the criminal justice system. reporter: roc miller led the nearly two-year study at the university of pennsylvania. so this is one of the reagent tests used to detect the presence of cocaine. reporter: here is how the field drug tests work. officers drop the substance into a small bag. if a vial changes color, that indicates the presence of an illegal drug. penn s study found of the nearly 1.5 million drug arrests each year, roughly half involved the field tests. and of those, almost 30,000 arrests stem from a false positive. how significant is that number? for one thing, it s not a number. it s 30,000 people. that s 30,000 times a year that the criminal justice system is getting it wrong.
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