BUSINESS ALCHEMIST TURNS URINE INTO GOLD ENTREPRENEURS, LABS PRODUCE LIQUID
ASSETS

Kenneth Curtis is the kind of creative, can-do American entrepreneur who
made this country what it is today. He saw a need, created a product, built
a business. But now Big Government is on his back. The politicians just
don't like what he's selling.

Which is urine. His own.

Curtis' urine is pure. It's natural. It's organic. It's composed of 100
percent recycled materials. And, most important to his customers, it's
guaranteed drug-free.

"I live a clean life," he says, "and I supply all the urine."

For $69, plus postage, Curtis sells five ounces of his urine in a little
plastic bag, along with 30 inches of plastic tubing and a tiny heat pack
designed to keep his fluid at body temperature. Taped to the body, this
"urine test substitution kit" enables customers to pass off his urine for
their own during workplace drug tests.

"I've never had a customer fail a test," he says. "I'm very proud of that."

Curtis, 40, was a pipe fitter in Greenville, S.C., when he started his urine
business four years ago. Every time he signed on with a new construction
contractor, he had to be tested. He always passed -- he doesn't use drugs --
but the testing irked him. He considered it an unconstitutional violation of
his privacy.

"I was being tested a dozen times a year," he says. "I found it very invasive."

So he decided to fight back. He developed his kit and founded a company,
Privacy Protection Services, to sell it. He set up a Web site that
advertises his, um, product, with a patriotic appeal, complete with waving
American flags and an essay on the Fourth Amendment. He's not selling urine,
his site proclaims; he's selling privacy, freedom and the American Way of
Life. He's sold thousands of the kits, he claims, although he won't say how
many thousands.

"Suffice it to say, I don't have to work as a pipe fitter anymore," he says.

Last spring, irate that Curtis' kit could foil drug tests, South Carolina
state Sen. David Thomas drafted a bill to ban the sale of urine. The bill
carried a penalty of five years in prison for selling urine -- or even
giving it away -- with the intention of defrauding a drug test. Texas,
Nebraska and Pennsylvania have similar bans.

"A business owner has the right to know that the employees working for him
are drug-free," Thomas says.

At a hearing on the bill, angry legislators berated Curtis. "You typify
what's worst about this country," said one.

"Everybody else is trying to clean up drugs," said another, "and you're
trying to put more in society."

"No sir," Curtis replied. "I'm selling urine, not drugs. Urine has been
around a long time."

The bill became law in June. To test it, Curtis walked into the Greenville
police headquarters and ceremoniously presented one of his urine kits to a
sheriff's deputy. The cops huddled with a lawyer and then decided not to
arrest Curtis, claiming his publicity stunt didn't violate the law because
the deputy who received the urine had no intention of defrauding a drug test.

"I'm still in business," Curtis says.

The bizarre brouhaha over Curtis' precious bodily fluids is the latest
skirmish in a long war between the drug-testing industry and a gaggle of
underground entrepreneurs who sell products designed to foil the tests:
pills, potions, powders, shampoos and packets of freeze-dried urine, among
other odd items.

"It's very much a cat-and-mouse game," says Tom Johnson, a spokesman for
SmithKline Beecham, one of the country's largest drug-testing companies.
"They come up with something to circumvent the process and the
(drug-testing) companies do something to detect it. We always like to think
that we're ahead."

"They detect it and we move on," says Matt Stevens, marketing director for
Spectrum Labs, which sells "Urine Luck," an additive that allegedly fools
the tests. "Beating the labs is like fighting the federal government --
they're so big and slow. . . . They can't detect the current formula."

This cat-and-mouse game began with the rise of workplace drug testing in the
1980s. In 1982, the U.S. military instituted the first large drug-testing
program after an accident aboard the USS Nimitz revealed widespread drug use
on the aircraft carrier. The testing spread to other government agencies and
then, by law, to companies contracting with the government.

Early drug-testing programs tended to affect workers in safety-sensitive
jobs -- pilots, bus drivers, train engineers -- but the practice soon spread
to include bookkeepers, burger flippers, blackjack dealers and ballplayers.
Today, 196 of the nation's 200 largest companies use some form of workplace
drug testing and nearly half of full-time workers have been tested at least
once. Most tests are designed to detect traces of marijuana, opiates,
amphetamines, cocaine and barbiturates.

Meanwhile, drug testing in public schools has increased since October, when
the Supreme Court upheld an Indiana law permitting schools to require drug
testing for students who participate in extracurricular activities. In Cave
City, Ark., for example, students who want to go on field trips or attend
the school prom must pass drug tests.

As testing increased, so did the demand for products designed to help
America's estimated 14 million current drug users -- most of them marijuana
smokers -- to beat the tests. "It's a burgeoning industry," says Rick
Cusick, "because the drug-testing industry is burgeoning."

Cusick ought to know. He's an advertising salesman for High Times, a
pro-marijuana magazine thick with ads for test-foiling products. The latest
issue carries more than 10 pages of ads for such "detoxifying" drinks as
"Ready Clean" and "XXtra Clean" and an herbal tea called "Quick Flush," as
well as shampoos designed to fool drug tests done on hair samples.

One carries a celebrity endorsement. Tommy Chong -- half of the Cheech and
Chong comedy team that cavorted through several goofy marijuana movies in
the '70s -- endorses "Urine Luck" products. He's shown standing with his
back to the camera and his pants around his ankles, producing a sample under
the malevolent gaze of a beautiful blonde. "Hey, man," the copy reads, "when
you get caught with your pants down . . . Urine Luck!"

"It's good old American publicity," says Chong, who claims competing
companies also contacted him but only Urine Luck offered money. "It made me
interested in the business."

But not interested enough to actually test the product on his own urine,
which he readily admits is constantly contaminated with marijuana residues.
"No, I haven't done that personally," he admits. But, he adds, "all of these
products, as far as I know, work."

"These schemes and scams are much more likely to fail than to succeed," says
Mark de Bernardo, executive director of the Institute for a Drug-Free
Workplace, a pro-testing lobbying group. "The science of drug-testing has
advanced significantly. In the United States in 1999, it's hard to beat a
drug test."

"I think these products are useless," says John P. Morgan, a professor of
pharmacology at the City University of New York Medical School and board
member of the pro-pot National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws
Foundation. "People are trying every day to stay ahead of the urine testers
but they're not succeeding."

Morgan has watched the war between the testers and the test-spoilers since
the early '80s. First were herbal potions designed to be ingested with large
quantities of water to dilute the urine so drug residues wouldn't appear in
detectable quantities, he says. It worked, but drug labs began rejecting
samples that were too diluted. Then came chemical additives that masked drug
residues, and labs began to test for them, too, Morgan says.

And that created a demand for good, clean, wholesome, drug-free urine.

"I know a guy who collected it from a child," Morgan says. "I know a guy who
collected it from a dog. And a guy in Texas who claimed he collected it from
a Bible study group -- but I think that was a joke."

Some companies sell freeze-dried urine -- the customer just adds hot water.
Innovative Research Technology sells a device called "The Urinator," which
dispenses artificial urine. "It's made in a laboratory," says company
spokesman Mike Smith, "to ensure that it's not a biohazard."

Drug-testing companies responded by immediately checking the temperature of
all samples: If they aren't around 98.6 degrees, they're rejected. Vendors
added devices to keep their products warm. The Urinator comes with an
electronic heating device. Kenneth Curtis' kit includes a chemical warming
device similar to the hand-warming packs used by hunters and a thermometer
for testing the sample before turning it in.

Curtis' kit works, which really irks Sen. Thomas. "Urine testing is easily
fooled by what this man is doing," he says. "Their technology is beating our
technology right now."

Meanwhile, Curtis is having a high time, selling his liquid wastes and
appearing on countless TV and radio shows.

"I get a great deal of satisfaction out of this job," Curtis says. "I'm
helping people to protect their privacy. The politicians have declared war
on the people under the guise of the war on drugs. This is a guerrilla
tactic to fight back. You fight against tyranny by any means necessary."

He expects to be arrested but says he's not worried. "They can't do anything
to me that hasn't been done to better patriots."

Until then, he continues to void his bladder into what he calls a
"refrigerated receptacle."

"I freeze it all," he says. "I don't waste any of my assets. It's literally
liquid gold."

(c)1999 San Francisco Chronicle Page A6