Pubdate: Fri, 21 Feb 2003
Source: Houston Chronicle (TX)
Copyright: 2003 Houston Chronicle Publishing Company Division, Hearst
Newspaper
Contact:  http://www.chron.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/198
Author: Martha McNeil Hamilton, Washington Post
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Testing)

BEATING DRUG SCREENING BUILDS COTTAGE INDUSTRY

Evaders Change Faster Than Testing Technology

Type "beat the drug test" into an Internet search engine, and you come up
with more than 100 Web sites devoted to helping foil workplace drug
screening. 

It's part of a technology race, or as Barry Sample, director of science and
technology at Quest Diagnostics' Corporate Health and Wellness division,
puts it, a marathon -- pitting those who would defeat the screening against
those who conduct it. 

The starting gun was a 1986 federal order establishing the goal of a
drug-free federal workplace. In subsequent years, testing spread to federal
contractors and then into the private sector. "Now it's pretty ubiquitous,"
said Diane Cadrain, a lawyer who is legislative affairs director of the
Human Resource Association of Central Connecticut. 

Rolling right along with workplace testing was the development of a
countereffort. "This is a cottage industry that has become increasingly more
sophisticated over the years," said Robert Stephenson, director of the
division of workplace programs in the federal Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services Administration's Center for Substance Abuse Prevention. 

Both the testers and the would-be cheaters watch each other and try to
reverse-engineer what the other side is doing, he said. One company says on
its Web site that it changes the formula for chemicals to fool the
drug-testing labs every six to nine months, he said. 

Early attempts to alter drug-test results were fairly obvious and relied on
products that were close at hand. And some of them still show up from time
to time, said Lottie Johnson, drug program coordinator for the District of
Columbia public works department, which requires drug tests for its truck
drivers and heavy-equipment operators. "Sometimes you smell it. It's like,
`OK, this is bleach,' " she said. 

Products that pledge to beat the tests include shampoos that promise to wash
away any sign of drug use from hair, as well as synthetic urine, urine
additives and detoxifying drinks or tablets with such names as "Fast Flush"
and "Clean Green." 

Sometimes product names remain the same, but the product is changed to keep
up with new technology. Vendors may offer to replace older, now detectable,
versions or warn buyers that product shelf life is less than a year. 

According to Quest, drug testing is making inroads against drug use and
against the use of adulterants to beat the tests. The company is one of the
largest drug-test diagnostic firms, analyzing about 40 percent of all tests
nationwide each year. Of 6.3 million tests it processed in 2001, 4.6 percent
were positive, down from a high of 13.6 percent in 1988. The company also
found that cases of adulterated samples were declining. 

"There are two possible explanations," said Sample. "One is that testing for
adulterants is having a deterrent effect." The other explanation, he said,
"may be that the cheaters are finding a way around the tests. Maybe it's a
little bit of both." 

Testing for adulterants has been widespread only since about 1998, when the
federal government issued standards of what constituted substituted, altered
urine. The definitions were needed because the drug-screening industry
realized that methods of beating the tests had become more sophisticated.
Nitrites and other oxidants began to show up in samples, signaling that a
chemical reaction had occurred. 

Nine states have passed laws making cheating on such tests a criminal
offense. Virginia's House minority leader, Franklin Hall, D-Richmond, whose
legislative proposal became law in 2001, said he initiated it after business
owners complained about seeing signs advertising ways to beat drug tests
posted on telephone poles near their companies. He hasn't heard complaints
since the law was passed, he said, "so I assume it must be working." 

Texas has had such a law on its books since 1991. 

Workplace drug testing pays, supporters say. A study by the Office of
National Drug Control Policy estimated that the nation lost $110.5 billion
in productivity in 2000 because of drug use, and the Labor Department
estimates that 6.5 percent of full-time and 8.6 percent of part-time workers
are illicit drug users. Marijuana is the most frequently detected drug,
showing up in about 60 percent of the positive tests, followed by cocaine.
Critics of the tests say that they pick up more marijuana users because the
drug stays in the body longer. 

Critics fault widespread drug testing as an unnecessary invasion of privacy.
While it makes sense to test people in safety-sensitive jobs for drug usage,
many of the tests contribute little to improving either workplace safety or
productivity, said Graham Boyd, director of the American Civil Liberties
Union's Drug Policy Litigation Project. Employers test anyway, he said, in
an effort to reduce their workers' compensation and insurance costs. 

"The fact that so many people are doing so much to subvert the system"
suggests widespread disdain, he said. "You don't see that with laws about
embezzlement because there is a shared moral code that embezzlement is bad.
If you don't buy into that, you really are an outsider."
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