HAIR ANALYSIS COMPANY DRAWS BIG-NAME CLIENTS AND VOCAL CRITICS

As the nation's largest provider of hair analysis, Psychemedics Corp.
is a lightning rod for criticism of this form of drug testing.

The company, with headquarters in Boston and a lab in Los Angeles, had
revenue last year of almost $18 million. While that's less than 2
percent of what is being spent every year on all forms of drug
testing, the company is growing along with the popularity of hair testing.

Since it was founded 13 years ago, Psychemedics has amassed more than
1,600 corporate clients, including such big names as General Motors,
Toyota, Michelin and Anheuser-Busch. Psychemedics also serves school
districts, probation programs and even has a retail kit for parents
who suspect their children are using drugs.

Psychemedics says its corporate clients are willing to spend up to $50
on a hair test - at least double the price of the standard urinalysis
- - because the test can catch more drug users. And drug users can cost
employers money, in lost productivity, thefts and accidents.

The hair test can detect drug abuse in the past 90 days. Urine tests
usually can detect usage in just the past two or three days.

Employers also like the fact that drug users can't cheat on hair tests
the way they often can on urine tests. Most drug users know they only
have to abstain for a few days to pass a urine test. They can flood
their system with water to dilute the drugs, or even buy one of the
plethora of potions on the market that claim to mask the presence of
drugs in urine.

Critics of hair testing include civil libertarians, employee-rights
groups and some scientists.

One vocal opponent is Michael Walsh of Bethesda, Md. He set the
standards for testing federal workers for drugs in the early 1980s. He
served under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush.

Of Psychemedics, Walsh says, "For 15 years, they've been trying to
market hair testing, and the scientific community has looked nine ways
to Sunday, and [the test] still comes up short."

Like others, he questions whether the tests are always accurate,
racially unbiased and able to discern external contamination of hair -
the sort an innocent person might pick up just by being near a
marijuana smoker.

Walsh said that when he was in government, Psychemedics lobbied him
heavily to endorse hair testing. The company continues to lobby his
successors, Walsh said, because the use of the test is still forbidden
in the federal government and in federally regulated industry. (The
federal government's point man on hair testing, Robert Stephenson,
would not talk to the Post-Dispatch.)

Walsh attributes the growth in hair testing to good marketing, which
he said has led employers to think that "everybody's doing it."

Critics have also said that Psychemedics was built on the connections
of Wayne Huizenga, who has made billions of dollars in such varied
businesses as Blockbuster Video, Waste Management Inc., AutoNation car
lots, rental car companies and professional sports teams.

Huizenga invested in Psychemedics a decade ago. With 11 percent of the
stock, he is the largest single shareholder.

Psychemedics readily admits that Blockbuster was a major client in the
beginning and that the lab has received business from other companies
connected to Huizenga. But "it's absolutely baloney" to say that
Huizenga is responsible for the bulk of the lab's business, says Ray
Kubacki, chief executive of Psychemedics.

The company is growing because of the accuracy of its test, says
Kubacki, who accuses Walsh of being biased because he consults for
urine labs.

With Psychemedics' patented technology, there is no way that a person
who doesn't use illegal drugs will test positive, Kubacki said.
Clients and researchers prove this to themselves by sending in
drug-free and contaminated test samples under fictitious names.
Psychemedics may not always find the exact amount of all drugs in a
sample, but it never assesses a sample as being positive when it
isn't, he said.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology performed the
government's only check on hair labs. Mike Welch, a chemist there,
said hair samples were sent every year from 1990 to 1998 to
commercial, academic and forensic labs in the United States and
Europe. The contaminated samples were accurately identified 88 percent
of the time. Samples that contained no drugs were correctly analyzed
97 percent of the time.

Welch acknowledged that the labs knew the samples were coming from the
institute; so, they might have taken special care with these tests.

Welch wouldn't say how each lab measured up, but Psychemedics said it
has the results to show that it correctly analyzed every sample from
the institute.

Kubacki said Psychemedics puts more money, equipment and time into its
testing than do other labs. For example, it washes hair samples for at
least 1 hour and 45 minutes to remove contamination, compared with
only a few minutes elsewhere.

To scientists who say they can't duplicate Psychemedics' results,
Kubacki issues an invitation to visit the lab and see for themselves.
The patents are available for anyone to read, he said.

"It's not magic," added Bill Thistle, the company's general counsel.