Everyone must take simple precautions to keep themselves safe in America. This means looking both ways before crossing the street and making sure they lock their house before they leave.

What is not considered a simple responsibility is for a women to apply nail polish that detects date rape drugs in drinks to keep herself safe before leaving her house.

However, that is what Undercover Colors suggests all women should do.

The company, founded by four male students at North Carolina State University, invented a type of nail polish that changes colors when it comes into contact with common date rape drugs. These include Rohypnol, Xanax and Gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid. The polish switches to darker colors to indicate the percentage of the drugs present in beverages.

Undercover Colors suggests on its Facebook bio that it has invented a way to grant women more authority.

“Our goal is to invent technologies that empower women to protect themselves from this heinous and quietly pervasive crime,” claims the bio.

But isn’t the problem that rape should not be seen as a quietly pervasive crime? Instead, people should know that one in every six women in the United States will report they have been raped at some point in their lifetime, according to the Race Crisis Center’s website.

It is obvious having a product only a small percentage of women will use is not the solution to such a widespread problem.

By having a product that puts added pressure on the responsibility of women to keep themselves safe from sexual assault, the blame is lifted from the perpetrator and placed on the victim.

This seems like a backward notion because really, isn’t it the rapist who we should be spending our time, energy and money to stop?

The invention of nail polish is not the first attempt to detect rape drugs in drinks.

Drink Safe Technologies, a company based in Tallahassee Florida, created an innovative drink coaster that allows women to test their drink on the coaster to see if it contains Gamma Hydroxybutyrate or Ketamine, the two drugs most commonly used to spike drinks for rape purposes.

Likewise, this invention expects women to be responsible for their well-being instead of placing the blame on the perpetrator.

By doing this, a culture is created where women are seen as solely responsible for being sexually assaulted instead of victims of a horrible crime.

This new nail polish and other safe drinking technologies are tools women can use to protect themselves.

There should be fewer people thinking about ways women can prevent themselves from being raped and more thought put into how we can stop rape from happening.

In this day and age, why is it easier to invent a nail polish that detects anti-rape drugs than it is to stop sexual assault?