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Introduction
to Drug-testing
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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.
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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.
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
