by Jo Ellen Nott

With the signing of HB26-1020 on March 26, 2026, Colorado became the first state to enact a targeted law limiting the harms caused by colorimetric field drug tests. The reform is narrow but important. Although it does not ban police from using these kits, it curbs the most dangerous consequence of treating a cheap, presumptive chemical reaction as reliable proof of a crime.

Colorimetric tests are popular because they are fast and inexpensive. An officer places a suspected substance into a pouch containing chemical reagents and looks for a color change that is supposed to indicate the possible presence of a controlled substance. But these kits detect broad chemical groups, not specific illegal drugs, and the result often depends on subjective visual interpretation outside a laboratory. Innocent substances, including ordinary household products, can trigger positive reactions. 

That flaw has become a systemic due process problem because field tests are not confined to the field. The Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School reported that roughly 773,000 of the more than 1.5 million drug arrests in the United States each year involve color-based presumptive tests. The same report estimated that about 30,000 people who do not possess controlled substances are falsely implicated and arrested each year. Reported false-positive percentages include 15%, 38%, and even 91%.

The deeper problem is that the criminal system often converts an unconfirmed test into immediate leverage. The Quattrone Center reported that almost 90% of prosecutors surveyed said guilty pleas are permitted in their jurisdictions without verification by an accredited forensic laboratory. Drug labs also reported that they often are not asked to review samples after cases resolve by plea. That means the very event that should expose a false positive, confirmatory laboratory testing, may never happen if the accused person pleads guilty first. Real-world cases confirm that this danger is not merely speculative. For example, in Houston, ProPublica reported that subsequent lab testing showed the alleged drugs in more than 300 convictions were not drugs at all. In a group of 212 cases where the evidence was later found to contain no controlled substance, all of the defendants had struck plea bargains, and 58% pleaded guilty at the first opportunity. Despite what much of the general public believes, factually innocent people plead guilty and do so at an alarming rate. 

Colorado’s reform grew out of the foregoing realities. In 2025, the state created a working group to study the use of colorimetric field drug tests in criminal proceedings and carceral settings. Filter reported that only four of Colorado’s 23 judicial district attorneys responded to the working group’s survey, but all four said field-test results were confirmed in a laboratory only when a case went to trial. That’s important because almost every drug-possession case resolves without trial.

HB26-1020 responds with two practical guardrails. First, when a colorimetric field drug test is used and a person is solely suspected of level 1 drug misdemeanor possession or a municipal drug possession charge, the officer must issue a summons instead of making an arrest. That change is crucial because jail pressure is often what turns a contestable case into a quick plea, even for the factually innocent. Keeping a person out of custody reduces the government’s ability to transform an unverified field result into a coercive bargaining chip.

Second, before accepting a plea in a drug-possession case involving a colorimetric field test for level 4 felony possession or lower, the trial court must give a specific advisement. The judge must tell the defendant that colorimetric field tests are subject to false-positive results, have known error rates, and are inadmissible in court. The defendant also must be told of the right to plead not guilty and request testing by an accredited forensic laboratory.

The law should not be oversold. It does not require confirmatory laboratory testing before every arrest, charge, plea, or prosecution. It does not erase probable cause doctrine. And it does not prevent officers from using field tests as presumptive investigative indicators. But it recognizes a constitutional principle that should be uncontroversial. The state should not be allowed to convert an unreliable roadside guess into detention, plea pressure, or punishment without meaningful safeguards.

Colorado’s HB26-1020 is modest because it leaves police with investigative flexibility. It is significant because it rejects the institutional habit of treating speed and convenience as substitutes for proof. A two-dollar chemical pouch should not decide whether a person is jailed, pressured into a conviction, or branded with the collateral consequences of a drug offense. In recognition of that fact, Colorado has taken a concrete step toward ensuring that liberty does not hinge on a flawed color change.  

Sources: Filter Mag; The Washington Post; Quattrone Center; HB26-1020.

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