Surely we should step it up to make our drug testing more accurate. You can test positive from eating poppy seeds. You can test positive for using inhalers. Nasal decongestants, cold medicines and antidepressants can also cause false positives.
But, there are ways of dealing with these weaknesses. What are sometimes called "confirmation tests" are more specific for the substance or medication in question. Could we involve this process during the initial tests? If it is more reasonable -- for cost reasons or whatever -- to wait for the initial test to come back before doing a confirmation test, then speed up the lab work so it does not take two days for the initial tests results to come back. The confirmation test needs to be done in a more timely fashion.
On the flip side, people try to "beat" the drug or alcohol test in one of a number of ways: 1) Dilution. They drink large amounts of water to dilute the content. (The trick doesn't work for alcohol, but does for drugs). 2) They drink of ingest one of a large list of test-beating substances. Pickle juice, vitamin C, salted cold coffee, herbal teas, aspirin, vinegar, fruit juices . . . there's not a shortage of items that can change the constitution of the urine sample to avoid the drug being detected. This process is known as internal adulteration. 3) External adulteration -- diluting the sample with water from the toilet or sink faucet or adding such things as bleach, ammonia or juices to "clean" the sample. 4) Take someone else's urine into the pissing room and use it instead of their own. 5) Substitute Mountain Dew, water with food coloring, beer, tea, apple juice or cologne for the urine sample.
Our testing facilities need to guard against these abuses. As is, some test sites might actually encourage those being tested to drink large amounts of water, telling them they must produce the sample in a given amount of time, so they better drink lots of water. Others wisely limit the water intake to 8 ounces an hour -- and that is the correct approach.
Other solutions include: 1) Creation of a tamper-proof collection site. 2) Directly observing the collection, a time-consuming measure but perhaps sometimes necessary. 3) Visually inspecting samples before sending them to the lab. 4) Checking the sample's temperature to ensure it has the warmth that comes with just-produced urine. 5) Search the person for juices and other substances before the test. If that is considered a violation of their privacy, then have them take off coats or such which make it easier to bring substances in undetected. 6) Do not have a set time for the testing. Bring the person being tested in when they do not have time to prepare for the test. Sometimes, this might be during the hiring interview. Ask them at that time if they would be willing to submit to a test and test them on the spot. 7) Don't leave it to just one test; test everyone again at random times during the first month. 8) Couple the urine tests with hair follicle and blood tests. 9) Use a lab that provides specimen-validity checks. 10) Have the lab offer comments on the test results, saying whether the sample possibly could have been adulterated, whether it was consistent with normal urine samples, etc.
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