cannabis urine test

More drug testing leads to more methods of deception

By Leslie Mann | Remarkable to the Chicago Tribune
August 19, 2008



Yes, employees are getting more and more unabashed in their efforts to falsify employers' drug tests. But, employers are on to them and their efforts mainly fail.

This according to Amitava Dasgupta, professor of pathology and laboratory physic at the University of Texas-Houston Medical School. After studying this of inquiry for the last few years, he recently presented his findings to members of the American Consortium for Clinical Chemistry at its annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

"I became interested in the ways people faker when our hospital started drug testing," says Dasgupta. "I went domicile and called some 800 numbers I found online and found I could buy anything I wanted [to twist a test] as long as I gave them my credit card number." It's unclear how many products are out there, he says, but new ones are hitting the buy all the time.

Whatever it takes

This industry is a large, underground one with adept chemists, says Dasgupta. Hand over your money, and they will send you Perfunctory Fizz Detox Tablets for $31.99 or Urine Luck for $35, for specimen.

In the past, some drug users added household products such as lighten, toilet bowl cleaner or vinegar to their urine. And while buying imitation urine or urine from drug-free people has been the cheaters' modus operandi for years now, says Dasgupta, the call now includes lots of new products that alter urine, either by ingesting them or by adding them to urine samples.

Dasgupta says he is amazed how innocent people can be. "Some people think if you spend all this money—and some of these products price a lot—they will work," he says. "Not all do. Or, people use them wrong."

Marijuana is the most ill-treated drug, says Dasgupta. Other drugs commonly detected in wage-earner screenings are cocaine, amphetamines, phencyclidine (PCP or "angel dust") and benzodiazepines...

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