In case you didn't grab last Friday's Inquirer—and let's face it, who did?—you missed a major revelation: It seems that nobody on the paper's editorial board has ever gotten beat for a bad bag of blow.

For a publication branded as out-of-touch with street culture and, um, criminally boring, this is impressive. Who'd have thunk that the White Tower was actually the aptly dubbed home to top-shelf coke connoisseurs? Well, look no further than their Dec. 30 "Philly Cops Didn't Rise to the Occasion" editorial.

It was an insightful take on their previous day's front-page article about a 20-year-old Bryn Mawr College scholarship student who got mistakenly locked up for three weeks in 2003 after police suspected that the white substance stuffed into three condoms in her luggage might have been drugs. And I quote:

"Police officers at the airport obviously need a little remedial training in the taste and feel of ordinary flour. … How much confidence can we have in this police crew's skill at catching real drug smugglers if they can't tell the difference between street cocaine and Betty Crocker? … How can you blame Lee for filing a federal civil rights suit against the city?"

Granted, both the Crocker reference and the "rise to the occasion" headline were witty little twists, but there are a few problems with the logic:

Everybody from drug buyers to police-evidence-room guardians have routinely mistaken coke and heroin for flour — and it's not just because both drugs are often cut with it. (For information about drug-cutting intricacies, call the Inquirer editorial board at 215-854-5060.) Nope, pure heroin is a white powder with crystals resembling fine-grade flour. And thanks to its powdered-coke-fine texture, flour's been successfully stuffed into North Philly eight-ball bags to cheat buyers for a dealer's easy profit and swapped with seized Mexican-border kilos so immoral narcs could make off with the real sniff. In fact, people have gotten arrested for selling flour under the guise that it's real coke.

All of which brings us back to poor Ms. Janet Lee, she of the Crocker camp.

According to her attorney, David Oh, Lee was wrapping up her first-semester finals as a Bryn Mawr freshman when she and some friends made—giggle, giggle—study-aid "stress relievers" by packing rubbers full of flour. After finals, she was packing to head home to Anaheim, Calif., for break and put three into her luggage.

A joke, she said, to show her mom.

Not a joke, she soon realized, to the Transportation Security Administration screeners who on Dec. 21, 2003, thought they could be filled with drugs and turned the could-be mule over to Philly police. When a field test turned up traces of opium derivatives (cocaine) and amphetamines, she was hit with felony drug offenses and held on a half-million dollars cash bail.

Lee, who tried to explain the confusion to anybody who'd listen, was facing 20 years hard time until she caught some dumb luck. The mother of an Overbrook High student Lee tutored recognized her in jail and got in touch with Oh, who reached out to some friends in the District Attorney's Office, who in turn expedited her case. When the white substance turned out to be flour, they cut her loose. Then, with the two-year deadline to file a lawsuit looming last week, Lee sued the Police Department and the officer who did the field test.

When I asked Oh why the whole thing wasn't his client's fault, he made a semi-convincing argument that the field tests never should have turned up the drugs and, as such, either the procedures are faulty or the officers were at best, poorly trained, and at worst, biased. His client—who spent some of her imprisonment worrying that there might have been coke on the dorm rugs that got into her condom—still hasn't gotten over the ordeal, crying regularly, even though she admits she was foolish. The six-figure suit, wholeheartedly endorsed by the Inquirer, is designed to send a message that we need checks and balances on those who are empowered to boss us around in the name of national security. "She knows she was lucky," says Oh, "and knows others won't be as lucky."

She's right: Some kid pushing beat bags of coke on a North Philly corner wouldn't catch a break. But then again, that kid would never be so downright stupid as to hop on a plane with it.

It's unfortunate that Lee lost three weeks of her young life, and we're all lucky that nothing tragic happened to her in jail. But rather than suing, Lee should take long hot showers when she gets stressed, tell her story very publicly and then let it go as, yes, dumb luck. And from there, rather than being on the hook for a big settlement, we could all ask ourselves:

How much confidence can we have in a newspaper's skill at backing righteous causes if they'll support an admitted ditz who could easily have been a drug mule over a Police Department that, while riddled with shortcomings worthy of investigation, tried to do the right thing?

Obviously, they need a little remedial training in the taste and feel of what merits a legitimate lawsuit—or a front-page story.