DRUG TESTING EFFECTIVENESS DEPENDS ON THE DRUGS

If lighting up a marijuana joint is in your evening plans, you'd
better hope you're not screened for drugs within the next 30 days.

Cannabis can be detected in a person's urine up to a month after
usage, said Dr. Patrick Callery, chairman of Basic Pharmaceutical
Sciences at West Virginia University. In hair samples, it can show
up within 90 days.

But several harder drugs, such as cocaine and heroin, tend to leave
the body much sooner without a trace. Those are usually detected in
urine only two to five days after abuse.

You may want to avoid drugs altogether if you're a Kanawha County
employee, coal miner or construction worker.

Drug testing has emerged as a hot issue in state and county
governments this year, as advocates for mandatory screenings say
it's critical to have a drug-free workforce serving the public.

Last month, Gov. Joe Manchin expressed interest in requiring all
agencies in the executive branch to screen job applicants for drug
use. And at the Capitol, a few drug-testing-related bills have been
introduced, notably one that mandates screening for coal miners.

Locally, some county officials want employees in safety-sensitive
positions to be randomly tested for drugs. The Kanawha County
Commission's proposal was introduced on Thursday.

But drug testing is nothing new, Callery said. In its current form,
it has been around for at least 25 years.

Urinalysis seems to be the oldest and most common first step to
detection, though blood, hair and saliva can also be tested. This
first step is usually known as the screening test.

A urine sample goes through a series of chemical tests, which can be
done on-site instead of being shipped away to a laboratory. This
way, obtaining the results can be cheap and fast - the screening can
be completed in a matter of minutes. Urine dipsticks are often used
and display colors, which correlate to any detection of drugs or
their byproducts.

Lynn Wade is administrator for the Labor Education and Development
program, commonly known as LEAD, which has become a commonplace
drug-screening initiative within the construction industry. Wade
said a routine urine sample is given at a local clinic or doctor's
office under LEAD's guidelines.

But random testing is conducted on the job site, she said. A trained
official then seals and labels the sample and prepares it for analysis.

A urine sample is actually split into two and placed into primary
and secondary specimen bottles, which are both sent to the
laboratory. Only the primary sample is opened and screened while the
second bottle remains sealed and stored at a laboratory, Wade said.

Workers who ultimately test positive for a drug that violates LEAD
policy have 60 days to request that the split specimen be sent to
another certified laboratory for analysis.

The LEAD drug-testing program is voluntary, but it has become so
prevalent that if workers refuse a screening or don't carry
LEAD-issued certification cards, they're unlikely to get work at
most job sites.

Cocaine, marijuana, amphetamines and opioids (morphine, heroin) are
the most common drugs tested for in the workplace.

A person testing positive in the initial screening, however, may not
have actually abused an illegal drug.

"Certain food substances can give false positives," said Callery,
who's also assistant dean of research and graduate programs in his
department at WVU.

"Poppy seeds come from the same family as morphine."

Eating foods that contain poppy seeds can result in a false positive
for opiods in a drug test. Morphine and codeine come from the same plant.

This was made into a quirky Seinfeld episode plot in which the
character Elaine tested positive for opiods in screenings mandated
by her workplace. It turned out that her obsession with poppy-seed
muffins resulted in the false positives.

Callery said he's actually heard of court cases involving defendants
using the "Poppy Seed Defense" to try to cover up heroin or morphine
abuse. That argument worked in the past, but today's tests are
advanced enough to determine whether a positive result is solely
from a poppy-seed food product.

That's why a positive sample goes on to a second, more detailed and
complex test, usually called the confirmation test.

This final step involves the use of a device called a mass
spectrometer, which measures ions and fully confirms any drug usage,
Callery said. These samples are usually sent away to off-site
laboratories for forensic chemists to test.

One popular method combines gas chromatography with mass
spectrometry, both scientific practices foreign to the common
person. In essence, these tests are the judge and jury in drug detection.

"In the Olympics, when an athlete loses a medal because of drugs,
it's usually because of GC/MS (gas chromatography/mass
spectrometry)," Callery said. "It's the standard for analysis.

"Forensic chemists like to have at least two confirmatory methods
that identify the structure of an abused substance. One of them is
almost always GC/MS."

Another method is called liquid chromatography.

"They both weigh molecules," Callery explained about the methods.
"Each molecule has a characteristic molecular weight. The molecules
represent the drugs or substances."

Chemists are able to look for other indicators of drug use not
normally seen in the initial screening test, he said.

The body converts drugs into other substances that form metabolites,
or byproducts. One of the easier drugs to detect is marijuana,
Callery said, because chemists can identify both THC, the main
substance found in a cannabis plant, and a certain metabolite that's
broken down from an early form of marijuana.

While the existing testing methods have worked efficiently for
several years, Callery believes new methods may need developed
because of the rising prevalence of designer drugs.

Screeners have altered their tests over the years to reflect drug
trends, Callery said.

"Some may be doing OxyContin," he said. "They'll screen for the
drugs making the news."

Callery and his department are currently experimenting with new
methods that test for the drug fentanyl, an opioid abused widely in
West Virginia.

The drug is available in a patch and is prescribed in various forms
as a powerful pain reliever. It has the potency of about 80 times
that of morphine.

"It's being diverted from its normal use and people are overdosing
on it," Callery said.