Introduction
to Drug-testing
General
In
the UK, in general, if you have a job where drug testing is required, you will
be fired if you refuse to submit to it. It will be there in your contract
and you would be in breach of contract if you refuse to knuckle under. It
sucks. It's a shit situation, but it's legal in the UK. But people
who work for banks, on the railways or in other 'safety-critical' positions do
not have a choice if they want to keep working. Certain companies and informal
cartels maintain blacklists of people never to employ again on the basis of a
failed test. This is usually done, they say, on the grounds of safety.
Which is how the UK is doing what America could not: gradually introducing drug
testing for drivers, as has been done in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Belgium.
It's
important that people get the facts. Testing is an art represented in court
as a science.
Drug tests,
be they GCMS or dip-test urinalysis do not detect THC. They detect the metabolites
for cannabinoid, bio-chemical markers produced by the human body when it processes
a cannabinoid. These metabolites can remain in the body for up to 90 days
in the case of a heavy smoker. For an average user, a detection time for
cannabis of 30-40 days is more common. Having a fast metabolism can reduce
these times. The level of cannabinoid metabolites in your body will depend
upon whether you are a heavy, medium or light cannabis user and on how fast your
body processes and expels metabolite build-up.
Water,
fruit juices and excercise
Drinking
lots of fluid to dilute your urine is a very bad idea. This is because UK
testing laboratories such as Medscreen carry out what is called an optical test
(I kid you not) where they *look* at the urine and if it is too clear then they
will reject it. Just like that.
The
problems with using fruit juice to provide coloration in a Urine sample is twofold:
juice is very high in vitamins, which is where you're deriving your colouration
from. If the level of vitamins in your urine sample is too high, you will fail
the test. Brightly coloured urine tends to arouse suspicion too. Consequently
calibration of juice intake would be critical to any such effort but is awesomely
difficult to achieve.
Commercially
available carbohydrate-drink style products use correctly calibrated portions
of vitamins to achieve the desired effect.
Exercise
is worth recommending if only to put people's metabolisms back into something
resembling acceptable shape and thereby give them a decent shot at processing
their drugs within recognised timeframes. People with slower metabolisms who smoke
cannabis are going to be liable to test positive for a longer time than someone
who smokes the same amount but has a faster metabolism.
Exercise
is not the sole governing factor in metabolism, either.
Golden
seal
The one thing
that results in an awful lot of failed tests, particularly in the USA, is Golden
Seal. The rumours about this herb providing a quick-flush are totally false
and fool a lot of people right along into losing their jobs.
Hair
testing
As a technique
this has yet to make a real impact upon the predominance of Urine testing in the
UK.
Hair testing focuses
upon what is found inside the hair shaft. Metabolites for drugs, including
cannabis, become lodged within the shaft and are thus detectable.
The
problems with hair testing (and Kevin B Zeese goes into far more detail than I
can in his Drug-Testing Legal Manual) is that it was calibrated on Caucasians.
In some African populations, certain Asian groups and even some Eastern Europeans,
their hair has a different consistency than this, one more likely to contain higher
levels of problematic substances. More intriguingly, with (for instance) cocaine,
actual molecules of the drug can be found in African (ethnicity) hair whereas
Caucasian hair is likely to only contain metabolites within the hair shaft (ruling
out *external* contamination).
Hair
testing is a deeply flawed technology drafted into the drug war after a US Navy
pilot put an F14-Tomcat through the deck of the USS Nimitz and drugs got the blame.
The Navy spent $2bn on the research and so clearly there was no possible way that
this test system could've been a dud. Clearly!
I've
heard of only one instance of hair testing in the UK and that was, worryingly,
at the request of a mortgage provider for their prospective 'customer'. It's provided
as an option for arrestees in Germany along with blood or urine analysis.
False
positives
If you
take Ibuprofen (the over-the-counter pain killer) you will test positive for taking
cannabis. This is a fairly well known 'false positive'. Others famously
include poppy seed bagels leading to failed tests for Opium and night-nurse
style remedies causing people to fail for cocaine. Stating any unprescribed
medications that you may be taking can be a key part of beating the test by creating
the legitimate need for a subsequent re-test.
This can be expensive if you
are in the unfortunate position of being forced to pay for your own test, as is
the case in some jobs and private schools.
Cut
off points and safguards
In
the United States there are Federal safeguards on drug tests, including mandatory
'cut-off' points that are far, far higher in terms of nanograms than the voluntary
cut-offs (where they exist) in the UK. Cut off points, below which a certain level
of metabolites will be accepted as a negative sample, have been the primary method
of improving testing 'accuracy', at least as far as the American courts are concerned.
The absence of a cut-off
point in the UK is just that: absent. We have much lower cut off levels than the
USA as there are no legal safeguards to insure a sufficiently high minimum.
A
high cut-off point provides a safeguard. It makes it less likely that a false-positive
or cross-contaminated sample will result in an individual failing the test.
The
issue
Ultimately,
testing should become a Unionised issue. However, this cannot happen while it
is so closely (and erroneously) associated with Health and Safety issues as nobody
wants to be seen to be standing up for unsafe practices.
Drug
testing does not show impairment. Metabolite levels do not indicate the level
of intoxication. Newer tests, such as optical scanners, can measure your response
time which means you can also fail or being tired or ill. These are a better guide
to a person's ability to perform reaction-critical work on a given day but are
unlikely to see widespread use due to the obvious effect of ruling almost nobody
fit to work. Plus, of course, academic research carried out in the last few months
by Acclaim software actually shows that a person's reaction times may *improve*
when given small quantities of cannabis. This is quite counter-intuitive.
In
any event, a company that needs to be seen to care about it's safety record while
catching a break on insurance premiums will always see drug testing as a quick-fix
solution. Of all the train crashes in the past five years, just how often have
the drivers *failed* their drug tests? I'm pretty sure it's never and yet testing
is the set-piece of the Transport Act introduced after the Kings Cross fire.
Further
reading
There's
a set of (American) 'Legal Manuals' by Kevin B. Zeese which covers the frankly
huge body of law devoted to testing in the USA:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0836610288/qid=1013693961/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/002-8597685-5172039
It
provides a lot of interesting arguments and approaches to challenge the legality
of drug tests that may be worth bringing up in the UK's jurisdiction. While
they aren't citable law in the UK, they do provide a litigant with a good idea
of what needs fighting and what rights they should aim for. A 'clean room'
for instance (forensically clean, that is) is a requirement for most Federally
mandated tests. In the UK I've heard of Railtrack personnel tested in sheds
with diptests (that don't even stand up in UK courts) while peeing into polystyrene
cups as their workmates look on.
Practical
issues
 |
Refuse to take the test!
Seriously, you should refuse
to take a test, because its an invasion of civil liberties, and a degrading and
humiliating experience. Use the info on this pages to back up your case, and encourage
your fellow employees to support you. |
| Clean
out your system.
If you decide to take the test, stop smoking. Forget all the rumours of magic
potions, only time and exercise will help remove THC from your fat cells. A high-fibre
diet might help your body package and excrete THC. |
| On
the day of the test.
Drink lots of fluid on the day of the test to temporarily
dilute your urine. Cranberry juice will temporarily strip out THC from your urine.
Don't give them your first piss of the day, as its the strongest. Similarly don't
give them the beginning and end of your piss - give them a sample from mid-stream. |
| Don't
tamper with your sample.
Unless you're very clever, the testing lab will know
that you've done it. If you switch clean urine for your own, make sure that its
someone your own age and sex, and that it's at body tempature. |
| If
you fail, kick up a stink.
The moment you are told you've failed, act incredulous: "what?! I can't have!
It must be a mistake!" That's what an innocent person would do. You'll have
to take a second test, so you've got extra time to clean out your system, and
pass the re-test. |
| Further
Information.
Buy a copy of Abbie Hoffman's "Steal This Urine Test" (Penguin, ISBN
0-14-010400-3) or have a look at our mirror of the piss-test
FAQ. |
