COULD SECOND-HAND SMOKE CAUSE POSITIVE DRUG TEST?

Experts Say It's Possible But Unlikely

Now that Raiders lineman Darrell Russell has been suspended for violating
the NFL's substance abuse policy, agent Leigh Steinberg says his client was
a victim of second-hand marijuana fumes.

Is Steinberg just blowing smoke?

Well, yes and no, say drug testing experts.

It's possible -- but rare -- for an individual to inhale enough second-hand
smoke to flunk a drug test, said Dr. Neal Benowitz, a professor of medicine
at the University of California at San Francisco and director of the
clinical pharmacology program at San Francisco General Hospital.

``It's commonly claimed, but it's not common,'' Benowitz said. ``It
requires intensive exposure . . . in a room or a car with a lot of smoke.''

Much depends on the cutoff level employers set for the trace amounts of
marijuana considered tolerable in a drug test. In most workplace drug
testing, employers set the cutoff high enough so that chance inhaling of
second-hand smoke (such as at an open-air concert) does not cause a
positive result, said Christine Fisher, the owner of Drug and Alcohol
Screening Services, a San Jose drug testing firm.

According to the NFL's drug policy, anyone who has more than 15 nanograms
of marijuana's active ingredient, THC, per milliliter of urine is
considered to test positive. That's more stringent than the 50 nanogram
cutoff level set by the U.S. Department of Transportation for truckers and
others in safety-sensitive jobs. A nanogram is one- billionth of a gram.

An NFL spokesman on Tuesday would not say whether other players who have
flunked random drug tests claimed they had inhaled second-hand smoke,
citing confidentiality. But wide receiver John Capel, a seventh-round pick
in this year's NFL draft, did just that, according to news reports, when he
failed an NFL drug test earlier this year.

Olympic snowboarder Ross Rebagliati regained his gold medal in the sport in
1998 when he successfully contested a flunked drug test. The Canadian said
he had been at a wake for a friend at which the mourners smoked marijuana
``by the bale.''