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pcholakis — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:52:54 +0000

Oral Fluid Drug Tests – Accuracy Proven

pcholakis — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 02:20:32 +0000

Study Finds Oral Fluid Drug Test Results Comparable to Urine Testing
December 2008

According to a recent large-scale study, laboratory-based oral fluid drug testing results are comparable to urine drug testing positive rates for the same classes of drugs. Results of the study, which was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, were presented by J. Michael Walsh, Ph.D., on October 29 at the annual meeting of the Society of Forensic Toxicologists in Phoenix.

Drug Testing – New Laws and Impacts

pcholakis — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 01:37:50 +0000

Source Material: Boston Herald – December 2008

A voter-approved law reducing possession of small amounts of marijuana to a civil offense may threaten to unravel drug testing of police and other public employees, although there should be no link between the two topics.

The law, which goes into effect Jan. 2, prohibits government agencies and authorities from enforcing any punishment for pot possession with a fine greater than $100, according to the Massachusetts Police Chiefs Association, and defines possession so broadly as to include traces of pot in blood to urine to hair and fingernails.

“This very much threatens to undermine our ability to do the drug testing we do,” said Jack Collins, an attorney for the Massachusetts Police Chiefs Association.

Collins is calling for police departments to stop drug testing certain employees until the Legislature can explicitly allow public employees who fail drug tests to be punished. Without swift action, police departments and other agencies face lawsuits from unions protecting their members, Collins said.

“At this point, it looks like a violation of their rights, and then there’d be a lawsuit and it would cost thousands of dollars,” he warned.

( I am not an Attorney, like Mr. Collins, however, if a company has a written drug policy for safety purposes and follows the policy, drug testing is not only legal, but a legal and moral responsibility of every employer in today’s society)

Berkshire District Attorney David Capeless predicted the new law has far-reaching consequences for even school bus drivers and MBTA train operators, who could point to the law and say they can only be fined, not fired, for marijuana offenses.

“People given the critical job of looking after children or the general public, there’s a greater risk now they could be high,” Capeless warned.

Concerns about the viability of punishing people for flunking drug tests follow news reports of drug use by public workers. The Herald found that 77 MBTA employees have failed substance-abuse tests over the past three years.

A task force set up by Public Safety Secretary Kevin Burke is examining the implications of the new law and how it will be enforced. Burke’s office is expected to provide answers to questions of drug testing by year’s end.

Meanwhile, the Boston Police Department plans to continue drug testing regardless of any uncertainty, said Elaine Driscoll. “Enforcing our drug policies is non-negotiable,” Driscoll said.

www.navigent3.com
drug free workplace solutions

Boston Unions Not Interested in Safety

pcholakis — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 03:32:15 +0000

4 MBTA workers who failed drug tests still on job

BOSTON – More than 50 MBTA employees who failed random drug or alcohol tests over the last two years remain on the job.

The Boston Herald reviewed the transit system’s testing records after two trolley operators who were involved in accidents last month were fired after failing drug tests.

Of the more than 8,700 employees who were randomly tested since 2006, the review found 77 had failed, 23 of whom eventually lost their jobs or resigned. Fifty-four remain at work.
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The Herald reported that 12 bus drivers, two train operators and three streetcar operators were among those fired.

The T’s two-strike policy gives employees who fail substance abuse tests a second chance following a 40-day unpaid suspension. Operators who fail a test after an accident are fired immediately.

Boston Unions Not Interested in Safety

pcholakis — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 03:32:11 +0000

4 MBTA workers who failed drug tests still on job

BOSTON – More than 50 MBTA employees who failed random drug or alcohol tests over the last two years remain on the job.

The Boston Herald reviewed the transit system’s testing records after two trolley operators who were involved in accidents last month were fired after failing drug tests.

The Herald reported that 12 bus drivers, two train operators and three streetcar operators were among those fired.

The T’s two-strike policy gives employees who fail substance abuse tests a second chance following a 40-day unpaid suspension. Operators who fail a test after an accident are fired immediately.

Drugged Truck Drivers on the Roads

pcholakis — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 04:09:48 +0000

(Source-Daily Examiner-Australia)
A POLICE operation has revealed that one in 38 truck drivers to be driving under the influence of drugs.

The statistic comes from the results of a three-day roadside drug testing blitz run by police.

Most of the truck drivers pleaded guilty.
As the test only screened for THC (marijuana) and methamphetamine, the actual number of drivers using drugs improperly is likely much higher.
The abuse of prescription drugs is the number one threat across most of the world according to international drug councils.

www.navigent3.com
Drug Free Workplace Solutions

Canadians and Drugged Driving

pcholakis — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 15:06:41 +0000

Drugging and driving on the rise in B.C.

Updated: Wed Dec. 10 2008 14:54:18

Darcy Wintonyk, ctvbc.ca

A new study says drinking and driving is slowing in B.C. — but it’s not all good news.

The 2008 British Columbia Roadside Survey found while fewer people were driving after drinking, many more were driving high.

Of 1,533 drivers surveyed in June by the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, more than 10 per cent showed evidence of drug use, while 8.1 per cent tested positive for alcohol.

A total of 16.9 per cent tested positive for drugs, alcohol, or both.

Doug Beirness, a senior researcher at the CCSA, says while the findings about drinking and driving are encouraging, the message about drugs and driving may not be getting through.

“People still don’t think the use of drugs impairs their ability to drive a car,” said Beirness.

He cites the fact that while 16 to 18-year-olds didn’t test positive for booze, some were under the influence of drugs, which indicates they may not understand the risk associated with being high and driving.

Beirness says despite perceptions that drug use is less harmful to drivers, there is growing evidence drug impairment is also a major contributor to crashes.

A study conducted in 2004 showed that drugs, often combined with alcohol, were detected in up to 30% of fatally injured drivers.

Some interesting findings from the study:

* Drivers testing positive for drugs were represented by most age groups every night the survey was taken.
* Age was not a factor in drug use among most drivers.
* Middle-aged drivers, 45-54 years old, led positive testings for drugs.
* This behaviour decreased somewhat in drivers aged 55 and older.
* Drugs most frequently found were cannabis, cocaine, opiates, and cannabis and cocaine in combination.
* Drinking and driving peaked on Saturday nights.

The Roadside Alcohol and Drug Survey 2008 was conducted Wednesday through Saturday nights in Vancouver, Saanich and Abbotsford in June 2008. Of all drivers surveyed, 90 per cent agreed to provide a breath sample to measure alcohol levels and 80 per cent volunteered to provide a sample of oral fluid (saliva) to test for drug use.

The full report is expected to be released in early 2009.

The findings will be used to evaluate the effects of Bill C-2, legislation that allows police to conduct roadside comprehensive drug testing.

www.navigent3.com OraPoint

pcholakis — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:42:52 +0000

Source: US World and News Reports August 2008

5 Ways Teens Might Cheat on Drug Tests—and How to Catch Them

These tricks are out there on the Web, so parents need to be informed

Note: There are no known methods to cheat an oral fluid / saliva drug test.

Google “beat drug test,” and the search engine spits out page upon page of ploys and products that can make incriminating urine seem drug free. All it takes is a computer-savvy teen to access them. The ease of cheating, in fact, is one of at least seven reasons parents shouldn’t try to test their kids for drug use. Instead, experts say, they should seek out a professional assessment.

“Cheating remains the Achilles’ heal of drug urine testing in all settings,” says Robert DuPont, president of the Institute for Behavior and Health Inc. and former director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. With increasing opportunities for testing—by prospective employers, schools, and parents—experts worry that teens may have more impetus than ever to try.

Last week, at the American Association for Clinical Chemistry’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C., toxicologist Amitava Dasgupta of University of Texas-Houston medical school demonstrated various ways that employees try to beat workplace drug tests—and how experts foil these schemes in the laboratory. There’s nothing to stop kids from using the same tricks, and there’s no guarantee that parents will be able to catch them at home.

Here are five ways—some of them downright dangerous—that teens may try to cheat drug tests. They’re all described elsewhere on the Internet, so parents should be aware of them.

1. Tampering. A sprinkle of salt or a splash of bleach, vinegar, detergent, or drain cleaner is all that’s needed to muck up a urine specimen. These and other household substances are all too often smuggled into the bathroom and used to alter the composition of urine, making the presence of some illegal substances undetectable, says Dasgupta. Same goes for chemical concoctions sold all over the Internet. Sometimes these additives or “adulterants” will cloud or discolor urine, easily casting suspicion on the specimen, but others leave the sample looking normal. Laboratory toxicologists employ simple tests to catch these cheats. For example, a few drops of hydrogen peroxide will turn urine brown if it’s been mixed with pyridinium chlorochromate, an otherwise-imperceptible chemical designed to foil drug tests.

2. Water-loading. Gulping fluids before providing urine, a long-standing tactic, is still the most common way that teens try to beat tests, says Sharon Levy, a pediatrician and director of the Adolescent Substance Abuse Program at Children’s Hospital Boston. Whether cheats use salty solutions to induce thirst, flushing agents that increase urine output, or just plain old H20, their aim is to water down drugs so they can’t be detected. Some testing facilities may check urine for dilution and deem overly watery samples “unfit for testing.” But consuming too much fluid too quickly can occasionally have dire consequences. “Water intoxication” reportedly killed a woman following participation in a radio show’s water drinking contest, says Alan Wu, a professor of laboratory medicine at the University of California-San Francisco.

3. Switching drugs. Perhaps most alarming, says Levy, is that teens bent on defeating drug tests will sometimes switch their drug of choice to an undetectable (or harder to detect) substance that’s considerably more hazardous. Inhalants, for example, include numerous types of chemical vapors that typically produce brief, intoxicating effects. “You don’t excrete [inhalants] in your urine,” says Levy, but “inhaling is acutely more dangerous than marijuana.” Indeed, inhalants can trigger the lethal heart problem known as “sudden sniffing death” in otherwise healthy adolescents, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The tragic case of young David Manlove is an example.

4. Popping vitamins. Perhaps it’s because niacin (aka vitamin B3) is known to aid metabolism, or perhaps it’s because Scientologists are said to take it in excess to flush their bodies of toxins. Whatever the reasons, some teens got the idea that extreme doses of this vitamin would erase any trace of their illicit drug use. Instead, it almost cost them their lives. In two separate incidents, emergency physician Manoj Mittal of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia has found adolescents who downed at least 150 times the daily recommended dose of niacin (15 mg) to cheat drug tests. (He described the cases last year in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.) Both kids were vomiting, had low blood sugar, and had “significant” liver toxicity when they arrived at the ER. And the niacin didn’t even do what they’d intended; both tested positive for illicit drugs. “People might think that since [niacin] is a vitamin it’s harmless,” says Mittal. “But these cases suggest that our bodies have limits.”

5. Swapping urine samples. Whether they use a friend’s clean urine, synthetic pee, or even freeze-dried urine purchased online, some teens try to pass off foreign samples as their own, says Levy. The biggest tip-off is temperature. “Anything significantly lower than body temperature is suspicious,” says Dasgupta, which is why some have tried to shuttle samples in armpits or taped to thighs to keep them warm. Possibly the oddest trick of all is a device marketed to those trying to beat witnessed drug collections, says Wu: a sort of prosthetic penis called the “Whizzinator” that claims to come equipped with clean urine “guaranteed” to remain at body temperature for hours, with the help of special heat pads. “Believe it or not, [the prosthesis] comes in different colors,” says Wu.

Canadian Drugged Driving Laws – Get Facts!

pcholakis — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 18:03:35 +0000

The following article is representative of the relatively high level of misunderstanding and misinformation relative to substance abuse and drugged driving.

When considering these important topics it’s critical to note the following. Informed decisions must be made when lives are involved.

1. Education alone will do little to affect substance abuse rates over the next several years. Programs such as “Dare” in the U.S. are noteworthy examples. There is a clear need to provide a deterrent to mitigate the effects of peer pressure and other behavioral factors.

2. Random drug testing, conducted appropriately, has demonstrated to provide a high level of deterence, significantly reducing substance misuse.

3. Drug testing, both on-site and laboratory-based is highly accurate. On-site testing is 95% to 98% accurate and laboratory-based testing, specifically GC/MS and/or LC/MS/MS is virtually 99.99% accurate. The statement in the article that “The false-positive rate will be soaringly high”, must by either a misquote, or the author is not familiar with associative technical factors.

4. Oral fluid based testing is the only specimen type that correlates and/or mimics what is in the bloodstream. Unlike urine testing, which only detects historical use, oral fluid testing can easily be used to deploy “per se” drugged driving law as there are “per se” alcohol laws.

5. Urine can not, and should not be used for drugged driving, or ANY indication of impairment. Urine can ONLY detect historical use. It would, for example, detect THC usage 3-5 days previously and thus inappropriately penalized drivers. Impairment from THC several days ago is virtually impossible. There is NO relationship between the concentration of drug in urine vs. blood. Lastly, applying urine-based test at the roadside is clearly not possible, and any delay in transporting donors to specialized collection sites is problematic.

Canada’s New Drug Testing Laws

‘The false-positive rate is going to be soaringly high’

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty (right) and OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino (centre) conduct a friendly RIDE stop in Toronto on Dec. 20, 2007. (Frank Gunn/Canadian Press)Last week, new legislation on impaired driving came into effect in Canada that includes tougher penalties and new, mandatory tests for drivers suspected of taking drugs. Under Bill C-2, the Tackling Violent Crime Act, effective July 2, if a driver is found to be impaired during a roadside test, he or she will be required to provide a mandatory sample of bodily fluids. Prior to the new law, the bodily-fluids test, known as a drug evaluation and classification assessment, or DEC, was voluntary. Motorists convicted of driving while under the influence of drugs or alcohol now face a minimum $1,000 fine for a first offence under the new law. Allison Dunfield of CBCNews.ca spoke with Alan Young, a criminal lawyer and a professor at Toronto’s Osgoode Law School, about the new legislation and possible complications that may arise from it.

First of all, what do you think of these new laws on tougher penalties for impairment?Really … it’s just tinkering with the existing law. A slight incremental increase in penalty has no deterrent effect. The thing that deters people is the licence suspension. The reality is that’s [the licence suspension is] what’s forcing people to plead not guilty. One thing that people don’t know is that impaired driving is the No. 1 charge being tried in our lower courts. Thirteen per cent of all cases are impaired [driving cases].

The actual penalty most people get is a fine, unless there is some sort of accident, so you’re not really going to reduce the incidence of impaired driving through the penalty scheme. Any reductions we’ve seen in the last couple decades have largely been [the result of] public education. I grew up in an era where people did not take this seriously, including myself. I remember in high school, driving in cars where people were very inebriated and not realizing what the risks were.

What about the section of the new law that has to do with forcing drivers to submit to urine and blood tests?

The majority of the reform or amendments deal with drunk driving. There’s no question it’s a laudable objective. But the problem is, in terms of implementation, it’s almost impossible to implement in any effective, meaningful way.

Can you go into some reasons for that?

Sure. Really, what the government had to do was to … determine how to detect the presence of …illicit drugs other than alcohol and what level of inebriation would put you over the top in terms of impairment — in the same way we arbitrarily said 80 milligrams of alcohol will do this. We needed to work on the research and we needed to develop the technology before we implemented a scheme that the police really can’t effectively carry out.

‘The false-positive rate is going to be soaringly high.’—Alan Young, criminal lawyer

First problem: Alcohol has such noticeable motor impairment. Everybody knows when someone is drunk. You can see it a mile away. There are so many different indicia of alcohol intoxication. So, the system works quite well in terms of the police picking up on this indicia. …Then they had a mechanism whereby they could take a blood sample, which could be mathematically converted into a blood alcohol level. So everything fit as a nice neat package. When you get outside of alcohol, the indicia of impairment is far more subtle.

Let’s take marijuana as one of the drugs they [the government] claim is a problem. There is so little motor impairment for marijuana. Most people cannot detect when someone is stoned. You don’t stumble over your own feet. You don’t get necessarily bloodshot eyes, you don’t slur your words, all those things.

That probably applies to almost every other illicit drug, with the exception of stimulants — you tend to race on stimulants, [but] there’s not a lot of evidence of stimulant abuse leading to traffic violations.

So, the first problem for the cops is, they’re not going to be able to tell the difference between someone who’s sleepy, someone who’s clumsy and someone who is stoned.

So, the law will be difficult for police to carry out in practice?

What’s going to happen is they are going to give these physical-impairment tests that don’t amount to much, and people are going to be dragged to the station to give bodily fluid samples, and the false-positive rate is going to be soaringly high.

I’m thinking you’re going to be taking maybe nine innocent people to be tested to find one intoxicated person.

Then, to prove they actually have the drug in their body, you have saliva tests, urine tests and blood tests. The bottom line is the only effective way of measuring is a blood-plasma test.

The saliva test could work for marijuana, but the technology is primitive. Urine will not determine current levels of a drug. It only is an indication that you’ve taken drugs in the past, because urine gives you what are called the metabolites of the drug — what … [it's] broken into after a period of time.

Marijuana metabolites will stay for 30 days. Heroin will stay for a week. So you’re not going to know unless you take a blood test whether or not someone actually has the drug in their body.

If you do the blood-plasma test, that would tell you what?

That would tell you what amount of marijuana is currently in their system. The blood test is the gold standard.

Here’s the other problem: We’ve at least decided that 80 milligrams of alcohol will render you intoxicated. It actually doesn’t for a lot of people, but we have to set an arbitrary limit so we have some certainty in the law. We really have no good science to tell us what level of THC [the active ingredient in marijuana] must be in your blood plasma to … say you are now intoxicated in terms of marijuana, and I would assume it would be the same for coca intoxication and opium intoxication.

We haven’t done the test because we had no reason to find out what is the level you need in your blood to be impaired, because our position is zero tolerance …so, no one has ever done these tests really to determine what level renders you intoxicated.

You might get a test result saying this person has so many nanograms of THC in their blood, and I guarantee you that any astute defence lawyer will simply say that can’t prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt unless there is some science to say at a certain level you start to have the indicia of impairment.

So, any way you slice or dice it, the police are put in a very difficult position right from the beginning of the investigation on the street to the point where they call in a medical practitioner to take blood. They’re not going to effectively get the types of information to prove beyond a reasonable doubt “impairment by non-alcohol substance.”

What you are saying is, we are going to go through this whole process, and in the end, we probably won’t convict many more people than we do now?

No. In fact, what you are going to do is create an enormous amount of work for lawyers in the next five years, not just in terms of defeating prosecutions but [also because] a lot of this will be challenged constitutionally. The reality is you can’t really impose a requirement of invasion of the body to get non-conclusive results.

I think in their [the federal government's] zeal to pass the law, they’ve simply put together an ineffective piece of legislation that has the advocates celebrating today because they don’t realize how threadbare it really is. And when the dust settles in five years, we are going to regret that we actually did this and didn’t invest the money developing the right technology and testing to really determine if someone is intoxicated by marijuana and cocaine.

What about the part of the law that requires a person who is determined by a roadside test to be impaired to then have a second test with a drug-recognition expert?

Well, the one thing we know is that very few officers have been trained. I don’t have the numbers, but I’ve heard we are talking about a dozen officers across the country. We don’t have testing facilities ready for this, and we don’t have the drug-recognition officers ready to do this testing.

So basically, this legislation might just sit dormant for a few years, but because it’s on the books, there will be officers who will overextend themselves and pull people into stations, knowing that they can’t complete the investigation because there isn’t a drug-recognition officer to test the urine. But they are still going to do it.

Without going through all those steps, there is no way somebody could be convicted under this new law?

It’s going to be unlikely, and I look forward to see what the first case will be, to see whether it will be an abject failure, which is my prediction. And don’t get me wrong — as with most Canadians, I want to ensure that drivers are not intoxicated even though I don’t believe [like] the government [does] that illicit drugs are contributing significantly to highway risk. I don’t believe that.

I still think as a general principle that people should have their full faculties when they are behind a 2,000-pound weapon. I take this very seriously. But I don’t want to waste the time of police, the time of drivers … sorting through the needle in the haystack to find the one impaired driver out of the 100 you’ve pulled over.

I’d like to see this legislation re-enacted in about a decade after we’ve done the research to do it properly.

Drug Free WorkPlace!

pcholakis — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 02:52:11 +0000

Over $160B is lost annually due to substance abuse in the U.S. workplace.

Additionally – Tens of thousands of lives, are lost to workplace substance abuse, while 77% of drug abusers remain employed, representing 10% of U.S. workers within the 18 to 49 year old age bracket.

Traditional drug-free workplace practices – specifically

urine-based pre-employment drug screening – have proven ineffective.

Random testing of existing employees is recognized by experts as a requisite component within any successful drug-free workplace program, vs. pre-employment screening only ..

however, traditional urine-based testing is not appropriate for most workplace settings, where the 20-30 year old technique is perceived as invasive, too difficult to implement, ] readily “cheated” by substance abusers, too costly relative to sending employees off-site for urinalysis.

The market place is eager to adopt a program and product that will address this problem saving corporate $$ and lives.

A comprehensive “solutions approach” is required.