When a person walks into a bathroom and is instructed to piss into a cup, there is often a lot hinging on the outcome. Sometimes it’s their job, sometimes it’s their probation status, sometimes it’s even the custody of their child. It could be all three.

Rarely does so much depend on your urine – but during a drug test, everything can.

Which is why fake pee (street name: ‘MonkeyWhizz’ or ‘UPass’) has become such a hot item online, in headshops and at truck stops around the nation. It is a synthetic alternative to using your own real pee (which is likely full of chemical red flags) to fool the test into giving you a pass. It is risky. But it is also an almost surefire way to pass a drug test, unless you’re caught – and for anywhere between $15-50, it is well-worth it for your job or your freedom or your family.

However, synthetic urine is frustrating lawmakers. Politicians don’t like it when they get the piss pulled over their eyes, so, in many states, policies prohibiting fake pee are starting to pop up. There are already laws against fake pee in 18 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. And more are following suit.

Fake pee is starting to be treated like a drug itself.

“People can basically use it to avoid consequences with their employers and probation officers,” says David Powell, the Indiana Prosecuting Attorney’s General, in an interview with the Cannabist. “There’s just no other legitimate purpose for it.”

Their logic goes: fake pee is being used by criminals to do drugs, without suffering the consequences. So, naturally, fake pee must be made illegal too. To stop drug use.

Right.

Never mind burner phones, or the dark web, or hydroponic gardens. Don’t worry about those tiny plastic zip lock baggies sold at every headshop in America, or about snuff shovels and coke bullets. It’s the fake pee that’s really the problem. Getting rid of it is the only way to make America safe again.

Despite the obvious flaws in this logic, insurance companies, lawmakers, businesses and concerned individuals are taking a stance against fake pee. It is unacceptable, they say, and it is only making it harder to catch and punish drug users for using drugs.

At the same time, companies across America are struggling to hire qualified people. And, in many instances, it’s because so many of them can’t pass a drug test. Turns out, a lot of Americans use illegal drugs, and many qualified employees are turned away every day because they chose to smoke weed on their own time.

It’s ridiculous. The fact that people need something like fake pee in the first place is absurd. Because, most urine-based drug tests aren’t looking for meth or heroine or crack cocaine – no – they’re looking for marijuana. And the fact that so much effort and so many tax dollars are being poured into fruitless, silly laws like Mississippi’s “Urine Trouble Act”, is troubling.

Of course, there are jobs that should require drug testing. It makes sense to make sure doctors and airplane pilots aren’t toking it up before work. But in other industries, the fact that companies and the government can demand your urine, force you to piss in a cup and then punish you for having used a medicinal flower sometime in the last month, is simply un-American.

The problem is not fake pee, it is America’s stigma on drugs – it is the drug tests themselves. If the government really wanted to solve the problem, they would legalize everything, end the War on Drugs, and focus on rehabilitation instead of criminalization.

That, however, would not keep our prisons at capacity.

So, expect things to continue along this path. Stock up on that fake piss while you can – for insurance purposes, if nothing else. Because, who knows? Maybe someday you will need it.