Recent questions about drug tests brought to mind another question. I attended a party given in honor of a friend where the guest list reached into dusty corners and brought forth many long lost acquaintance. One old friend was there with her beau, who smoked marijuana.
He was currently on parole, and had a drug test the next day. He was supremely confident that the test would not detect his marijuana usage, as he asserted that the test for that was expensive and was only run when that was suspected. He was clean for everything else and, no, I’ve never seen him again.
Was he right about that?
I recognize that various scenarios might produce different tests. A parolee monitoring environment that has to test many individuals weekly might yield some indicators to budgetary pressure that an accident investigating body would not forego. And I could easily understand most testing regimens not worrying about a peyote screen if that required a separate test. But I don’t know.
FWIW, this is not a beat the test question - I have nothing to fear from any test for illegal drug usage.
Well, for around 7 bucks a pop a civilian can buy a drug test from Walmart. You think the “state” is paying that much for a drug test?
Shithead knew he had a drug test. What, exactly, did shithead think they were testing for? St. Josephs baby apirin? Weed is the most common drug used, and is in fact easy to test for. This guy doesn’t know squat.
You haven’t seen him since? That’s because he failed his drug test and is back in the pen.
As a footnote to this, let me say that most employers who are cheap run urine tests for their employees. Weed always shows up in these, especially if smoked in the last 2 weeks. If you’re a cop or want the fat government job, then you usually take a hair test involving DNA and that can detect most narcotics and everything else some say going back more than 3 months.
And if this guy thought he would clear the chamber and then drink a gallon of cranberry juice or something, I would love to be his parole officer.
I posted this in the other drug testing thread, but I tested negative for pot on a Monday after I had smoked on the weekend. I was not a heavy smoker of pot, just a little (1-2 hits) and not often, maybe once or twice a month. So either they didn’t really test my urine, or the test failed to detect anything. BTW, I was told the company spent $150 per test, this was back in the early/mid 90’s.
I am pulling this completely from memory so take it with however much salt deemed necesary.
In the early '80’s the test for marijuana was quite expensive and was used only on a case by case basis. It tested for the active ingredient of the drug itself. (thc)
It was around the mid to late 80’s when a much cheaper test was developed that detected enzymes produced by marijuana use rather than the drugs presence.
Like I said, I am a little hazy on the particulars, so feel free to correct me on the specifics of the chemistry involved.
So, it seemed you friends info was correct, just a few decades or so out of date.
Broomstick, DreamWorks: hate to burst your bubble, but that cheap test can be beaten. I know because I beat a piss test three days after a three-week period during which I was toking marijuana heavily.
But now I’ve received conflicting inputs. Perhaps the guy was right in a certain time-frame (early '90s and before), but that has ceased to be the case?
I gather from recent input that the leaf-blowers will show up on almost any suite of modern tests.
For those of you that think that you have nothing to fear from drug test because you don’t “do” drugs please keep in mind this one thing;
You are providing your employer or a government official with the same urine sample that your doctor asks for. Your doctor can run a myriad of tests to determine any number of things. Are you pregnant?, do you have diabetes?, and are you pre-disposed to any genetic disorders that might cost the employer in increased insurance premiums if you actually contract a disease?
You may think that you are only being tested for drugs and maybe you are, but I, for one, wouldn’t trust a current or especially a potential employer with that much information of me. And you will notice that they seperate your sample into two vials, one that gets tested immediately and one that gets saved for “further study”.
Another point to be made here is; drug tests do not test for marijuana itself, they test for the substances that your body produces to get rid of the marijuana after it is ingested. We don’t allow someone to be convicted of murder for cleaning their bathroom floor, we are required to find trace amounts of blood that they may have missed before we can be assured that they weren’t just cleaning up a normal spill. Until recently Advil would give a false positive for marijuana and OTC ephedrine tablets would give a false positive for amphetamines because your body gets rid of these substances the same as their illicit counterparts.
The final word on this is; drug tests are an invasion of privacy and are ripe with the potential for abuse, your congressman will agree, late last year Congress voted down an initiative to test the Congressmen and their aides because they determined that such testing would be an invasion of their privacy and was forbidden by the Constitution and they were afraid of the same things that I outlined in the first paragraph. So, there you are, the people that work for us cannot be forced to piss in a cup, but if you want to keep your job you must.
mojo filter, urine tests are necessarily limited. Yes, they can be used to test for a lot of things, but what sane employer wants to open himself up to a possibility of an invasion-of-privacy suit for testing for things like pregnancy and diabetes?
I agree with you 100% in that they are an invasion of privacy. For most people. The people who work in nice, cushy office jobs aren’t affected by illegal drug use, save for the usual effects that any substance abuse problems might have. But there are some occupations that demand the people doing them be sober. Would you want the surgeon or pilot to whom you entrust your life to be allowed to use drugs without fear of detection? Would you want your kids’ babysitter to watch them under the influence?
mojo you are correct in that urine can be tested for a whole lot of stuff. OF course, the tests have to be ordered. When I’ve submitted for a doctor’s office, I’m looking at the orders and it lists what tests are being done (not that I know much more than CBC = complete blood count). The forms I’ve seen for drug tests for employers include a permission slip which identifies what is being tested.
In addition, these tests are expensive. The prospective employer is paying quite a sum in the first place for the drug test/physical alone. IME, they do this so they can get a reduced rate on their workers’ comp insurance (which can run quite high). I don’t see that even tho’ it’s possible to test urine for other stuff, that it’s likely that the potential employee’s urine would be (w/o specific orders that the potential employee would see and/or huge costs for the employer).
You of course are free to refuse to submit to employer related drug testing.
As far as the individual “I did such and such and didn’t get caught” stories - My understanding of how they set the perimeters of the testing is that they acknowledge there would be a certain number/percentage of “false negatives” (folks who’d used but tested negative), that to raise the sensativity so as to reduce that number would also raise the level of “false positives” (folks who hadn’t used but tested positive), Since they wished to achieve as near of a zero for the false positives, there would presumably be some false negatives floating around. (that’s how it was explained to me back when I was dealing with urinalysis back in the 80’s).
At that point, too, depending on the situation (criminal justice/employer etc.) they may or may not have been testing for certain substances. I don’t think we tested for THC for the first several years. (and there’s also the possability that the person was smoking something other than what they thought they bought ) _
Wring: I doubt that many of the tests are that expensive. If a corporation is hiring people to chop up meat products or do data entry, I doubt that it will spend the money to do mass spectrography or high-performance chromotography.
The only time I took a piss test, I gave the sample to the woman who hired me. She put it in a blue liquid and inserted a cardboard strip containing several windows filled with a plastic- or celluloid-like substance. I suspect this test is not very precise or detailed, and can be beaten by anyone who knows what she is doing. I am not going to give details of how I beat the test because of bibliophage’s warning. But believe me: I had smoked a couple of joints three days before and had been toking for about three or four weeks on a near daily basis. And it was marijuana, Wring; after 26 years as a head I cannot be fooled.
Peyote the companies I’ve worked with spent about $45 per for the drug tests. (that’s what they told me IIRC, when they bitched about some one failing it), the DOC manages to get a huge corporate discount, due to extreme volume (so to speak), or did the last time I knew what they were charged. The point about the $$, was that after spending the $45 for the piss test, I doubt that the co would want to spend additional $$ to discover if you’re diabetic (which when my doctor has ordered it, there were other instructions which wouldn’t be done at an employment related physical).
It’s likely that yours wasn’t tested for THC, or you were one of the ‘false negatives’ that they expect, or perhaps (depending on what you did to ‘alter’ the test), they didn’t test for that alteration (some do).
IME with the corrections field, they’re pretty up to date on whats/hows folks avoid them etc., so if you find yourself in that situation, my recommondation would be to not count on your method. Any other discussion would take this out of GQ and I don’t want manny, biblio, Jill & Dr pissed (nudge nudge wink wink knowwhatimean ) at me.
Actually, wring, I think they were testing for THC. The employment agency that recommended me for this position specifically said I would be tested for drugs. Since marijuana is the most commonly used illegal drug, I fail to see why the company would fail to test for it.
Assume DOC means Department of Corrections. Believe me, I am doing my best to stay out of the state’s hands. But then, I have always believed it is illegal only if you are caught.
it may be the most commonly used drug, but IME, it’s still not always tested for. YMMV. If it was a manufacturing position, I’d suspect the ‘usual suspects’ of cocaine, opiates, amphetamines, tranqs were more likely to be tested. But you may be correct, they may have also tested for THC.
Best of luck keeping out of hands of DOC.
MsRobyn:
I agree wholeheartedly that their are occupations that require complete sobriety and I do not condone any individual putting another at risk with their choice of lifestyle. But, drug tests do not protect us from what is worrying you. They do not tell us whether an individual is under the influence of marijuana at the time the test is performed, they only tell us whether the individual has, in the past, used marijuana. You can, with current urine drug tests, abstain for several weeks before a test and then get thoroughly stoned immediately before the test yet still test negative. The test does not determine whether you are under the influence, it determines if you have ever been. I cannot see how knowing whether my pilot or doctor or whomever has been indulging over the weekend is going to make me any safer. You can enjoy a fine glass of vintage Merlot over the weekend and still show up sober for work, marijuana can and should be treated the same way.
wring:
You are correct that a reputable company would not open themselves to the litigation that would accompany such invasion of privacy. But, there are disreputable companies out there and the potential for abuse is high. Imagine how lucrative owning such information could be. Just for example: An insurance company that underwrites a company’s policy could give a substantial rebate to the company if they hire only perfectly healthy individuals or women that are not pregnant or testing positive for a fertility drug. A company could also be curious about what prescribed meds you may be taking. Would you want a company basing your employment on whether or not you are taking Prozac? Anyway, like I said, the potential for abuse is there, you make the call on whether every single employer can be trusted with this much information on you.
FWIW–I just checked on statistics for California 338,000 people on parole in 1999. Check in once per month (or more, depending on how pissed off your parole officer is), 12 months that’s 4,056,000 tests @ lets say $20 a pop (test cost plus administration). Thats 80 million a year. You think?
My brother was on probation, is a pothead, and didn’t test positive until he pissed off his parole officer. Now he’s tested twice a month and drinks. I liked him better when he was in a quiet, vegetative state. He forgot much, but seemed to cope better with stress.
By the way, he doesn’t trust parole psychologists, and won’t seek help because he thinks that he’ll be put back in prison, and maybe he’s right. Who’s to say it’s morally wrong to choose one’s own medication? Some go to a shrink, and their health care plan provides them with a $20 copay and prozac, he pays for his own. I judge people by their behavior, I don’t need a drug test.
Ah! The wonders of the internet. Just got back from the CDC site–they say that there’s 119,636 parolees–the 338,000 figure is total caseload. 170,000 were put on probation, some for less than one year. Still, I think that parolees are likely to be tested when they first get out, and when they’re under suspicion/anger their parole officer.
What I know as fact is that my brother smoked, and he didn’t get busted. He used to take something that was expensive and claimed to cause one to test negative, but I thought that that was a bunch of hooey.
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