Drug tests

The subject of drug screens has aroused a good deal of controversy. Members of the ACLU are firmly against any drug screens in the workplace. They agree that employers need to have employees who can perform well and can produce results. Still, they contend that it is unfair to test all employees, even those not suspected of drug abuse. Those who have written the argument for the ACLU have failed to mention the use of medicolegal drug tests. The following article uses information on those medicolegal tests to poke a hole in the ACLU’s argument.

Drug screens involve the detection of drugs of abuse. The test sample in a drug screen comes from the urine of the tested individual. There are three basic reasons for conducting drug screens.

A physician might conduct a drug screen while a patient passes through a drug treatment program. Such drug screens do not need to meet the same high standards as those conducted in other segments of the testing community. They are intended to provide the physician with information that can direct the direction of the continued treatment, treatment intended to remove the patient from a dependency on drugs.

The laws have demanded that drug screens be used beyond the medical community. They are also performed for legal reasons. Such drug screens can provide a legal team with evidence that a suspect has abused the use of drugs. When used legally, the simple drug screen becomes part I of a two-part test.

Performance of a simple drug screen can sometimes lead to the appearance of false positives. For instance, a person who has taken a cold remedy before undergoing a drug test might seem to be a user of amphetamines. Someone who has been drinking an herbal tea from South America might appear, after testing, to be a user of cocaine. Even someone who has recently eaten a roll covered with poppy seeds might hear that a drug screen has come up positive for opium use.

That is why drug screens done for legal reasons must include two different parts. The second part calls for use of a more accurate test. That second test has the ability to pick-up evidence that could demonstrate a shadow of doubt surrounding an earlier, false positive result.  In court the lawyer must provide results from both parts of a two-part drug test.

At times a physician and an employer will both get results from the same drug test. Such drug screens are described as medicolegal tests. They demand a greater accuracy than the drug tests done for medical reasons alone. Like the legal tests, the medicolegal tests must be considered incomplete without results from both parts of the test.

Medico legal drug testing usually takes place in the workplace. In that setting, the employer wants to identify drug users in order to prevent potential accidents. The employer also hopes to provide an employee with treatment for his or her drug addiction. In that way the employer is better able to retain the skills that have been acquired by the tested employee.

Medicolegal drug screens underline the desire of most employers to avoid too severe a penalty for drug use. If an employee has shown a certain degree of competence, then drug screening results will only motivate the employer to offer medical assistance to the drug-addicted worker. Of course drug-induced incompetence will not be tolerated.

Drug memories eating at my insides. Pain and black bloody socks underneath springs of musty bedrooms as man-boy trippy posters of freddy krueger on acid beating some bloody wrestler to a crying pulp gigging over some airbrushed hot model. It was just a collage on my wall, but in my state it was alive and breathing, staring at me as I was staring at it. I didn’t know how to pass a drug screen, and one was coming at work. What was I going to do? I was going to have to pass a drug screen or lose my job, and it was too late to pass a screening without some help.Where was I going to look to learn how to pass a drug screen? Some said goldenseal worked, some said it didn’t, but I had no clue how to pass a drug screen. No clue at all.

Whether I keep my job or not doesn’t matter while laying under the bed in this psychedelic state, though it gnawed at me. It doesn’t change a thing, whether or not I know how to change a drug screen…. I have issues… you have issues… Ghandi had issues… We all have issues, though Ghandi’s issues certainly weren’t centered around figuring out how to pass a drug screen!

I think that life is what you make of it. It doesn’t matter who is or isn’t watching the game if you ain’t on top of it. Maybe that was Forrest Gump, who knows? I wonder if he knew how to pass a drug screen? My mind had definitely started its descent down the slippery slope.

You’ll lose, I thought. I pondered a lot when I was like this. No good came of it, and I wouldn’t remember it when I was sober anyway.

I am beaten…
Battered…
Tired…

My insides are crushed, my eyes have become malleable like beanbags, my brain is a fibrous substance used in some disgusting orange drink that relieves constapation.

I’m at a dead end again, which seems to be my terminal destination. Think I’ll drink and smoke again, but that’s what got me in trouble in the first placed, worried about how to pass a drug screen, to beat a pee test.

Strapping life on every morning gets rougher every day, I mean, you can’t even draw a waking breath without a pollution-filled cigarette to wash away all the nightmares that invaded your sleep time with energetic and violent spasms. What’s the point of going on from there, really? To watch your corpse rot from inside out, squirming with maggots and puss? To become a microwave casualty? No way. Sweat and slave for some other guy to get rich. Do all the work and watch your organs explode like fireworks.
I’m tired of singing the same old song. Maybe the best way to pass a drug screen is to kick drugs.

It’s a bright & sunny day when you kick the habit I hear. The birds are singing… but that’s not all they’re doing… Anyway, people seem happy and content and the cell phone is quiet and the radiator blows up but I handle that, because it happened to go down when I had some coin in my pocket. I lucked into a wad of cash when things went down so I was actually able to pay for it.

…Anyway, it’s bright & sunny & all is well because now I kicked drugs and–.

I should be cool but I have to wonder, what about the last swirl as it goes down the toilet bowl?

Seriously, there’s that lazy swirl that never goes down and you have to jiggle the handle to make it finally go away.

Or there’s the power swirl that spits out blue, poisonous, fine smelling venom that devours the toilet bowl like a water spout in the Gulf of Mexico at 3 PM on any day during the tourist season, the one that devours everything in an instant.

I mean, which swirl am I? Maybe I should quit the drugs!

The introduction in more and more companies of drug testing programs has lead to the development of several different types of drug screens. A number of companies purchase and use those screens.  In some cases, the increased production sought by use of drug screens has not paid for the costs of performing such screens. For that reason, the cost of drug screening procedures has become an important issue. It is an issue that will require a careful cost-benefit analysis. It is an issue that demands attention to specific cost savings, the cost savings obtained by any organizations that select certain of the screening methods.The limited space for this article does not allow for a cost-benefit analysis of a large number of drug screens. For that reason, the writer has selected one of the many available drug screens. The following paragraphs will present a cost-benefit analysis of a saliva test.

Each saliva test, like each drug screen, offers a panel of drugs that might be detected by the test user. The saliva test on which this writer has chosen to focus is a 6-panel test. It is designed to detect marijuana, cocaine, amphetamines, methamphetamines, opiates and PCP. The popularity of this saliva test does not arise from the nature of the panel. The popularity of this saliva test derives from its convenience.

Since convenience is a difficult thing to measure, the reader can probably appreciate the elusive nature of an answer to this question: How much do instant rapid drug screens cost? Perhaps the real question should be this: How does one go about evaluating the cost involved in using any of the drug screens?

Because the saliva test, unlike the urine test, does not involve controlled collection, its use does not involve collection site fees. In addition, certain special equipment that is needed for urine tests is not needed for saliva tests.  Moreover, the user of a saliva test enjoys other cost savings. With a saliva test, the testing organization does not need to pay for same sex collectors. The expensive and complicated training given to the providers of a urine test can be eliminated by changing to a urine test.

An organization that chooses to screen by using the saliva test has little difficulty locating a site for that test. The saliva test does not introduce controversial privacy issues. In addition, the saliva test promises rapid results. The 6-panel test will give results in 10 minutes. If “time is money,” then the saliva test is a more efficient way to approach the need for drug screens.

The organization that administers a saliva test seldom needs to worry about adulteration of the test sample. It is quite difficult for a test subject to adulterate a liquid as it comes out of his or her mouth. That subject can later (about 10 minutes later) see clearly the results of the saliva test. Since the test subject can be shown the results at the testing site, lawyers lack one possible reason for initiating a possible challenge to the test results. This is a benefit that should enter into an evaluation of the test’s cost.

The principle behind the saliva test is not difficult to understand, or difficult to explain to test subjects. The final benefit of the saliva test comes from its shelf life. An organization that has purchased a saliva test has 18 to 24 months in which to use that test.

Although society did not remain blind to drug use by adults in the 1960s, the employers of that decade did not initiate the use of drug screens. One explanation for the absence of drug screens at that time can be found in the publication of the novel titled Valley of the Dolls. That novel pointed out the prevalence of drug use among many “desperate housewives.” Obviously such housewives were not then in the workforce. Had they been working at that time, drug testing would no doubt have started much sooner.During the last two decades of the 20th Century, employers often needed to pay for the performance of drug screens. Increasing numbers of workers in every sector of society had chosen to use drugs while carrying-out their job responsibilities. That choice had impacted the job performance of many members of the workforce—from the individual working at the drive-in window of a take-out restaurant to the Research Scientist investigating the causes of and treatments for a major disease.

By the middle of the 1990s, the number of employers using drug screens had shown a slight decrease. In the last half of that decade, some employers decided to concentrate less on regulation of employees, and to put more money into some type of counseling program. By the middle of the 1990s, some employers had begun to question the effectiveness of drug screens.

Sometimes drug screens yield false positive results. That can produce friction between a willingly compliant employee and a concerned employer. A drug screen can produce a false positive result if an employee has recently eaten a bakery good that had poppy seeds on the top crust. Such a result would leave the impression that the tested employee had used opiates.

Sometimes employers see clearly that they have good reason to question the results from scheduled drug screens. That is especially true when a drug screen looks for evidence of inhaled drugs. In some workplace environments an employee occasionally walks into a room filled with chemical vapors. The inhalation of those vapors might yield a positive result during a drug screen.

Despite the problems associated with drug screens, not all employers have ruled out the need for such testing procedures. In work environments where employers must handle heavy and large pieces of equipment, post accident drug screens appear to be a necessity. That fact has been substantiated by the general work habits of young and temporary employees.

Employers who rely heavily on temporary or part-time employees might derive real benefits from drug screens. Studies have shown that unemployed, young adults tend to use cocaine and marijuana with a greater frequency than their working peers. The different behaviors shown by the two groups stood out most sharply in cases where the working employees had full time and permanent jobs.

Such information on drug use among temporary employees seems to color the thinking of company employers. Some large companies, such as Amgen, refuse to allow their temporary employees to attend any sort of meeting. They seem to think that such employees can not be trusted with the information that they would have a chance to hear.

When employers emphasize compliance over innovation, then they establish an unfortunate precedent. Those employers focus public attention on the need for a safe and sure way to clamp down on drug use by all employees.

A pH strip can help an employer to detect a urine sample that could give a false negative result. That fact has uncovered attempts by some employees to disguise their drug use during a number of urine drug screens. Yet a pH strip can not reveal the ability of a sample to give a false positive result. That is why employers are cautioned against a reliance on the results their urine drug screens. The following article provides details on the confirmatory tests that employers should turn to, in order to obtain the needed confirmation of a positive result from any drug screen.A number of different web sites offer information on ways to beat a drug test. Yet sometimes the ability of a chemical to confuse one of the urine drug screens can create real problems for the tested individual. Sometimes the immunoassays used in such urine drug screens can yield a false positive result.

There are reports on the Internet that demonstrate the ability of a urine drug screen to become “confused” by the appearance of a chemical that is similar to an illegal drug. More than once, a person who was taking the antidepressant drug Zoloft came up as positive for benzodiazepines or narcotics following one of the routine urine drug screens.

Scientists who do routine testing label such results as “false positives.” The occurrence of such false positives should not be seen as evidence that there is a defect in the process behind conducting urine drug screens. It does, however, show that the results from any such screening process need to be confirmed by a more reliable testing procedure.

The immunoassays used in the urine drug screens can not always distinguish between two different chemicals with a similar composition. Zoloft, for example, “looks” to the immunoassay a great deal like benzodiazepine. The more traditional antidepressant, imipramine, would not give a false positive result. It gives a patient freedom from depression, without causing that patient to risk getting a false positive result during a drug screen.

Still, not every physician feels inclined to prescribe imipramine to every depressed patient. That is one of the reasons why employers must seek a confirmation of the results from any drug screen. There are three different tests that can be used to confirm or reject the results of a drug screen.

One such test involves use of gas chromatography. During the test a vaporized test chemical becomes what is called a mobile phase. That mobile phase then becomes separated in stationary phase. The separation process shows the exact nature of the vaporized chemical.

Another confirmatory test uses mass spectroscopy. That test measures the atomic mass of the components in a test chemical. The mass spectrometer generates a mass spectrum of those particular components.

One can also confirm the drug screen results by using a combination of gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. When those tests are used in tandem, they produce a molecular fingerprint. Lawyers defending a person accused of drug use would relish the ability to show the judge a molecular fingerprint from a GCMS machine.

That is why no employer should dismiss an employee solely on the basis of the results from a drug screen. Such an employer could soon be called to court, and might discover too late that the drug screen had delivered a false positive result.