HAIR TESTS FOR DRUG USAGE RAISING CONCERNS

Despite the bias issue, the procedure is becoming more popular because it
turns up more drug users than urinalysis.

WASHINGTON-An increasingly popular test for drug abuse,based on hair
strands for traces of narcotics,identifies far more users than standard
urine tests,federal authorities agree.

But many worry that hair-based tests sometimes finger innocent subjects;
such as children of drug abusers or police assigned to narcotics details,
who can be exposed to drugs without taking them. There also is concern that
hair tests turn up disproportionate numbers of non-Caucasians. That's
because some researchers have found that traces of drugs last longer in
thick, dark hair than thin, light-colored hair.

"The scope of drug testing is expanding dramatically, and with expanding
hair testing, the likelihood of bias will increase, too. It's a major
problem" warned J. Michael Walsh, executive director of the President's
Drug Advisory Council under Presidents Reagan and Bush and now a consultant
to the urinalysis industry.

The potential effects are wide-ranging. About 20 million Americans undergo
drug tests each year, according to the Institute for a Drug-Free Workplace,
a Washington-based alliance of drug-test proponents. The majority are job
applicants without rights of appeal.

About 80 percent of companies that test for drugs rely solely on urine, and
only 2 percent use hair. One reason is legality. Urine tests have universal
acceptance in courts, while skepticism about the science behind hair tests
persists. The other reason is politics. Employers, state regulators and
courts want a green light from federal public-health experts before they go
ahead with hair testing. And the regulators remain skeptical.

To date, "hair analysis for the presence of drugs is unproven, unsupported
by scientific literature or controlled trials," Food and Drug
Administration spokes-woman Sharon Snider said.

"Hair testing may turn out to have a complementary role in workplace
testing," said Robert Stevenson, deputy director of the Workplace Programs
Division of the federal Center for Substance Abuse Prevention. "But we have
yet to resolve remaining questions about its fairness and the ability to
interpret results consistently."

Still, hair tests are becoming more popular. That's partly because the
tests turn up more drug users than urinalysis and counter some of urine
testing's shortcomings. Also important are sustained lobbying and marketing
efforts by Psychemedics Corp. of Cambridge, Mass, which dominates the
hair-testing market.

A decade ago, Psychemedics' biggest customers were Nevada casinos. Today,
they include Anheuser-Busch, the Federal Reserve System and General Motors.

Florida entrepreneur H. Wayne Huizenga, founder of Blockbuster
Entertainment, gets much of the credit. He led a group of investors that
bought Psychemedics out of debt in 1989. With Blockbuster as a mainstay
customer, the firm grew to more than 750 clients, according to its 1996
Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

In that year, Florida legislators, pushed by Huizenga's lobbyist, approved
hair testing in the state. The law grandfathered Psychemedics' patented
hair-testing process and set high hurdles for future competitors. By the
end of 1997, according to company general counsel William Thistle,
Psychemedics had 1,000 clients.

Thistle and other Psychemedics executives insist patented methods are
unbiased and produce no "false positives" from innocent drug exposure. If
hair testing were to supplant urine testing for drugs, Thistle ventured in
an interview, from three to 10 times more illicit drug users would be
caught.

The result could be a new epoch in the nation's drug-war history: "Drug
users wouldn't be employed," Thistle said flatly, "or they'd be in
rehabilitation programs."

Using scheduled urine tests, the New York City Police Department caught one
drug abuser in seven year, according to a published report. In the first 18
months of random hair test by Psychemedics, more than 30 NYPD employees
tested positive.

In another comparison, involving 774 job applicants to Steelcase Corp., a
Michigan furniture maker, urinalysis tests were 2.7 percent positive.
Psychemedics hair tests on the same applicants were 18 percent positive.

But hair testing also has its flaws. It can't catch recent drug use the way
urine tests can, because traces of ingested drugs take about five to seven
days to show up in hair. On the other hand, hair tests can detect drug use
within 90-day period.

"We can't see what's immediate," said Psychemedics general counsel Thistle,
"and they can't see what's not immediate." Hair and urine tests are
complementary in another way, researchers say: Urine tests catch marijuana
easily and cocaine and heroin with great difficulty. Hair tests do just the
opposite.