Drug testing is a thoroughly un-American idea which should be abolished in the US, where we are supposed to be "innocent until proven guilty". As a drug test presumes guilt, it runs contrary to the theory behind American justice. As for other countries, I'm not sure what their laws are, but I think drug testing is categorically unacceptable.

Furthermore: why should your employer care if you smoke a little weed on the weekends? Drinking on the job is usually prohibited, but drinking on the weekends is not. Smoking pot on the job is also prohibited, but it's not your employer's business what you do with your spare time.

I refuse to work anywhere that requires a drug test, especially random drug tests. If you are unfortunate enought to have to pass one, and aren't "clean" at the time, don't worry -- several good methods are available:

  • Substitution, i.e. bringing someone else's clean urine into the test. Use a heating pad in your pocket to keep it up to body temperature. If you're going to be monitored (which is even more intolerable), you'll have to be a little sneakier about it.
  • Additives. At least one additive, such as KLEAR, is available for purchase online that will produce a negative test result if added to the sample.
  • Dilution. Drink large amounts of water for 24 hours prior to the test, and possibly add some hot water to the sample itself.

In most cases, a simple test called the EMIT (Enzyme Multiplied Immunoassay Technique) test will be performed on the sample; if this comes up positive, a much more expensive test (probably GC/MS - Gas Chromatography / Mass Spectroscopy) will be administered to verify. If you actually are clean, cause a false positive by consuming several tablespoons of poppyseeds or a large dose of Ibuprofen. This will force the company to use the more expensive verification test only to find that the first result was inaccurate.

Find a copy of the Drug Test FAQ online for more advice and information. I encourage everyone to fight against this unfair practice -- even if you don't use controlled substances, this type of suspicion and paranoid enforcement cannot be tolerated. Although drug testing policies are controlled by corporations and companies, and you may be bound to that law by contract, that doesn't make it acceptable or appropriate.

This is Corporate America. You're assuming that working for a corporation is like being a citizen of the United States. It isn't. Working for a large corporation is effectively like living under a totalitarian government for eight hours out of every day.

In US Law, you are innocent until proven guilty, for legal proceedings. You have a certain right to privacy. When you sign on with a corporation you sign at least a portion of that right away willingly. If you don't agree, they can't test you for drugs, but if you don't agree, you can't work there.

Just one of the bummers about working for the man.

Drug testing is very efficient way to exclude people from society. Think about a person who works regularly and smokes an occasional joint. Then there's a drug test and the person fails it. The results are that the person is sacked and she gets a stamp on her forehead. In some cases she is forced to go to a drug clinic or something as well / instead. She doesn't have any problem smoking a pot, say once in a month. The only problem is a drug test and authoritarian-conservative ideology beoynd it.

In Finland they have recently flashed possible obligatory drug tests for school children and there has been quite a lot of debate on drug tests on workplaces.
The leader of the Conservative party, Ville Itälä, is a great advocater of mandatory drug tests. He fails to understand (no wonder, he's a conservative..) that it's almost impossible even from purely financial side. The mandatory drug tests for school children once a year would cost much more than they spend money on rehabilitation programs.
Rarely I have to witness such an idiocy as mr Itälä said that even though drug tests are not reliable (true) it's better to have unreliable drug tests than no drug tests at all! So, hooray for control, discipline and capitalism -- no matter of few innocent getting into trouble.

There was also a work group investigating the legislation and possibilities of drug tests. In their report they rejected the idea of obligatory drug tests on workplaces. The report said that these tests should be voluntary and there shouldn't be any consuquences if a worker refuse to take a test. Of course it's very hard to prove if a possible discrimination was due to the refusal of drug test or not. The work group defended their conclusions saying that drug tests are the violation of personal privacy.

It doesn't surprise anyone that their report was attacked by conservative media by large. What they fail to understand that in these tests both unreliable and expensive they also do not detect the most of harder drugs. Cannabis can be detected from your urine after a month but such drugs as heroin and crack cannot be traced back after couple of days.

They say that drug tests are a vital condition for the operation of society. What if a schoolbus driver is on acid while working? Do you want to travel on a plane captained by a crackhead?
It's very scaring to notice that this kind of alarmism really affects on people. But just like you're able to recognize a drunken person I bet you can recognize if the captain of an aeroplane is tripping at the very moment.
Yes, there are problems doing drugs but do, please, not create them from nowhere. Once the problems are noticed why not to test them after? Thus we could advise the problemed to enrol a drug clinic or whatever...

How does drug testing work?

Urinalysis (Urine testing)

Urinalysis uses a drug screen and then (usually) a drug test to detect metabolised drugs in the urine sample. Basically, a drug enters the body in its psychoactive form, and come out as a metabolite. It is these metabolites which are found in the urine, as the drug itself has been broken down.

Take for example cannabis: the ingredient that gets you high is the THC, 11-nor-D-9-tetrahyrocanibinol, which travels from the lungs into the blood stream, and then is absorbed into fat cells. It is then stored in these cells until they are burned for energy, when they are released back into the blood stream (This is why marijuana can be detected for some time after consumption). This metabolised marijuana is divided into about 30 different metabolites, the most common of these being THCA, 11-nor-D-9-tetrahyrocanibinolic acid. These metabolites are then detected in the urine using a screen test (spectrometry), and then if the levels are high, either gas chromatography or mass spectrometry.

The number of metabolites produced by different drugs varies, from 1 for phencyclidine, to 4 for cocaine, 5 for amphetamines and 31 for dope.

Hair tests

Whilst the drug derivatives are in the bloodstream, they become trapped inside the growing hair follicles as the blood feeds growing hair. Drug tests from hair are taken from the nape of the neck as this is where the drug is most concentrated. The hair is dissolved by organic solvents which frees up the trapped metabolites. The results of the testing on hair is usually used in correllation with urine testing to produce a more accurate result.

Regardless of what my feelings are on drug testing, it is a fact that the majority of us will be asked to give a sample of our bodily fluids so that some kind of authority figure may poke around in it, and find out what we've been doing in our spare time. Some of us may have nothing to worry about. Some of us may protest the process by refusing to do it. Some of us may want to find out exactly what to expect, and how to beat the process.

In the interests of providing this information, I have formatted this FAQ by Justin Gombos for presentation on E2. In this FAQ, you will find detailed information on different types of drug tests, how they are executed, and how to beat them. Please note that all information given in this FAQ is for informational purposes only, and neither myself nor the author necessarily condones doing anything listed therein. Also, before you do *anything* with your body, please make sure that you have complete and prior knowledge of what you're doing.

This FAQ has been reposted on E2 with the permission of the author, who may be reached at jgombos@csun.edu.

The following changes were made for the presentation of this FAQ on E2.

  • Fixed a few typographical and grammatical errors.
  • Formatted and hardlinked text.
  • Split the FAQ into three parts, due to the 64k writeup limit on E2.

       Drug Testing FAQ: Part 1

       1. INTRODUCTION

       1. DETECTION TIMES
             1. Halflife of TetraHydroCannabinol
             2. Detection times of several drugs
             3. Positive (definition)
                   1. Second hand smoke and positives 
             4. Decreasing detection times 

       2. TEST METHODS
             1. Substances that are detectable
             2. DrugAlert
             3. Gas Chromatography
             4. Gas Chromatography / Mass Spectrometry
             5. Hair testing
             6. High Performance Liquid Chromatography
             7. Immunoassay
                   1. Radio ImmunoAssay (aka Abuscreen)
                   2. Enzyme Multiplied Immunoassay Technique
                   3. Fluorescence Polarization ImmunoAssay 
             8. PharmChek
             9. TestCup
            10. Thin Layer Chromatography 

       3. TEST STANDARDS AND ACCURACY
             1. Procedures used
             2. False positives
                   1. Ibuprofen
                   2. Cold remedies, pain relievers, hay fever remedies, and diet pills
                   3. Antibiotics
                   4. Melanin (black skin)
                   5. DHEA
                   6. Dental treatment 
             3. True positives (legitimate)
                   1. Poppy seeds
                   2. Testosterone supplements 

       Drug Testing FAQ: Part 2

       4. A NOTE ON COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS

       5. THINGS TESTED TO DETECT COUNTER MEASURES
             1. Color
             2. Temperature
             3. Creatinine
             4. pH
             5. Specific gravity
             6. Age
             7. Gender 

       6. PRODUCING CLEAN URINE
             1. Dilution
                   1. Water
                   2. Creatinine level
                   3. Vitamin B 
             2. Diuretics
                   1. Ultimate Blend (c) (was Test Free)
                   2. Detoxify Carbo Clean (c)
                   3. Naturally Klean Herbal Tea (c)
                   4. Goldenseal
                   5. Certa or Certo
                   6. Vales Original Formula
                   7. Lasix 
             3. Vinegar
             4. Dexatrim
             5. Fiber
             6. Vitamin lecithin
             7. How to give a clean sample
             8. Exercise
             9. Beta-2 agonists
            10. Beta-3 agonists
            11. Low dosaging 

       7. DRUG SCREENS
             1. Drug screens that work
                   1. Aspirin 
             2. Drug screens that do not work
                   1. Goldenseal
                   2. Niacin
                   3. Zinc sulfate 
             3. Untested drug screens
                   1. Puri-Blend (c)
                   2. The Stuff (c) 

       8. DOPING SAMPLES
             1. Effective additives
                   1. Bleach
                   2. Klear (c)
                   3. Water 
             2. Ineffective additives
                   1. Ammonia
                   2. Blood
                   3. Draino
                   4. Goldenseal
                   5. Hydrogen peroxide
                   6. Lemon Juice
                   7. Liquid soap
                   8. Mary Jane's SuperClean 13(c)
                   9. Purifyit (c)
                  10. Sodium nitrate
                  11. Table salt
                  12. UrinAid (c)
                  13. Vinegar
                  14. Visine
                  15. WD40 
             3. Untested additives
                   1. Papain 

       Drug Testing FAQ: Part 3

       9. SUBSTITUTION
             1. Substitution methods
                   1. Concealed container
                   2. Injection
                   3. Catheterization 
             2. Where to get clean urine
                   1. Urine from a donor
                   2. Powdered urine
                         1. Making your own powdered urine 
                   3. Dog urine 

      10. STEALING URINE

      11. IF YOU FAIL THE TEST

      12. WHO DRUGTESTS?
             1. Which companies test, and which don't? 

      13. POLITICS AND ETHICS OF DRUG TESTING

      14. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
             1. Contacting the author 

      15. FOOTNOTES

      16. SOURCES
             1. Contributors
             2. Works cited
             3. For more information
                   1. Drug testing consultants on the net
                   2. Drug testing mailing list
                   3. Sites
                   4. Newsgroups 

      17. DISTRIBUTION RULES 

    (c) indicates that the item is a commercial product.

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