Nationwide drug tests boost biotech company

[Lunar Loops]

This from The Telegraph (UK):
Nationwide drug tests boost biotech company


By Katherine Griffiths

Last Updated: 1:04am GMT 22/01/2007





Cozart, a small British biotechnology company which makes saliva testing kits, has been boosted by a national roll-out of a system that tests criminals for drugs just after arrest. The Home Office's Drugs Intervention Programme was started in 2001 in three areas, including Nottingham, and will now include 173 police custody centres in England and Scotland.
It allows police to test for heroine, cocaine or crack cocaine when someone is arrested, rather than only when the person is charged. Many criminals who have used drugs escape detection because of the delay between arrest and being charged.
Local police forces will have to fund the programme and will have to demonstrate that they can offer services such as support centres and counsellors for drug users. This will have quite an impact on Cozart, an Abingdon-based drug discovery firm.
Cozart supplied 168,700 kits to the police in the past financial year, up from 101,200. It had revenues of about £2.5m from selling the saliva testing kits.
Chris Hand, managing director of Cozart, said: "Our cost base now is static. So if we sell more, it means more profits."