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FRIDAY, July 25 (HealthDay News) -- Individuals bent on beating drug tests need only turn to the Internet to find dozens of products that claim to help them do so, scientists have found.
Researchers at the University of Texas at Houston Medical School plan to present a detailed list of drug-test cheating options, along with sophisticated counter-measure tests that can be done by laboratory scientists, at the American Association for Clinical Chemistry's annual meeting, Monday, in Washington, D.C.
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"People have been trying to cheat on drug tests for decades," said Alan H.B. Wu, director of chemistry and toxicology at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the research. "The general population is unconcerned, because they're clean and don't need to worry about that. But, if you're addicted to opiates or painkillers, your job is dependent on clean urine, and these people go to great lengths to try to pass that test."
"These [Internet] companies prey on that mentality with products that enable them to cheat, and laboratories, on the other hand, employ countermeasures to try to detect that practice," Wu added.
Drug testing basically started in the 1980s, after President Ronald Reagan issued a mandate ordering federal agencies to have drug-free work places. The federal government and many other employers now have mandatory drug testing. Today, some 20 million employees are screened annually in the United States for illicit drugs, and maybe 1 percent to 2 percent of samples come out positive, Wu said.
Time-tested ways to cheat on drug tests include using someone else's urine, adding drain cleaner, disinfectant or even water, vinegar or hand soap to the urine sample, or drinking herbal tea. Some people have even tried to smuggle drug-free urine hidden in their armpits or inject drug-free urine into their bladders, the researchers said.
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