NOT ALL SOLD ON PUTNAM SALIVA DRUG TEST ACCURACY

WINFIELD, W.Va. -- Questions linger over Putnam County Schools' new,
costly, controversial and relatively rare policy to test middle and
high school students for drugs by swabbing their saliva.

Some wonder if saliva tests are as effective as urine tests, which
school board members had originally planned to implement but nixed in
favor of the less-intrusive saliva swab. Experts, though, say saliva
tests are just as foolproof as urine tests, if administered correctly.

"Lab-based oral fluid testing has been proven to be as good as urine
testing for all the drugs," said Dr. Todd Simo, director of medical
services for the drug-testing agency HireRight. "The positive rates
between the two are almost exactly identical."

Good results hinge on test administrators following directions to the
letter, Simo said. That includes making sure the test taker hasn't had
so much as a Tic Tac in his mouth for at least 10 minutes.

Virtually any substance can dilute the test taker's saliva and distort
lab results.

Some test-takers have tried crazier-sounding remedies, like gargling
peroxide or bleach before an administrator inserts the swab.

"I don't know how long you're going to keep bleach in your mouth,"
Simo said. "but these hammerheads can do some stupid things."

Even water is probably just as effective at washing away traceable
amounts of marijuana, cocaine, alcohol and other drugs from the saliva
glands, Simo said. After 10 minutes, though, the saliva glands should
have regenerated enough uncontaminated saliva to yield an accurate
result, he said.

The general problem with the oral swab is that drugs are traceable in
saliva for a very short time, compared to urine.

"The reality is that, if the kid is going to smoke dope on Friday
night, he won't test positive on Monday," said Dr. Michael Walsh,
president of the Walsh Group, a Maryland-based firm that specializes
in toxicological research.

The saliva swab window lasts about 24 hours for marijuana and most
methamphetamines, Walsh said. Those drugs dissipate from the user's
saliva after that time, which makes the saliva test less than ideal
for school students, he said.

Police generally use the saliva swab to test recent drug use in DUI
suspects, Walsh said. Even then, the tests are sometimes tough to
administer because those drugs often give the user dry-mouth, he said.

The other problem with mouth swabs is that on-site preliminary screens
are largely ineffective at detecting traces of marijuana in the
saliva. Both Simo and Walsh say that on-site testing devices are
virtually useless at yielding accurate results for the drug.

"It's not the kind of thing anyone should base an employment decision
on," Simo said. "It's not the type of thing they should make a
school-based decision on either."

On-site testing devices cannot detect high enough quantities of THC,
marijuana's main ingredient, in the saliva, Simo said. Administrators
should always take specimens to a lab for a more thorough test, at
which point the accuracy rate is just as high as urine tests, he said.

Walsh found in one of his studies that on-site test kits missed 60
percent of the marijuana users that a follow-up lab test caught. Tests
for methamphetamines and amphetamines, like crystal meth and speed, do
not fare much better. On-site tests missed about 20 percent of those
users, Walsh said.

"If you do an on-site oral fluid test you're not going to have a lot
of positives," he said, "but you're kind of sticking your head in the
sand."

Several Southern West Virginia counties have implemented urine testing
in school, including Mason, Jackson and Cabell counties. Putnam County
appears to be a pioneer for saliva testing in the state.

But saliva tests, although less invasive than urine, come with a much
higher price. Putnam board members expect to shell out $50,000 a year
for the saliva tests, $20,000 more than their counterparts at
surrounding schools pay for the urine test.

A saliva sample is more difficult to test than a urine sample, Simo
said. Urine is easier to process, and comes in larger quantities. With
saliva, administrators usually take the equivalent of a dampened cue
tip back to the lab, he said.

Jackson County started the tests in the 2008-09 school year, according
to Director of Secondary Education, Jim Mahan.

In the first year, 375 students at the county's two high school were
tested. Nine students, or 2.4 percent, tested positive. The second
year, the district tested nearly 1,000 students in the high schools
and the middle schools and had 8 positive tests, less than one percent
of the pool.

Cabell County has been testing just as long.

At the end of 2008-09, the school system had 20 positive tests out of
363 students. Roughly the same number tested positive the following
year.

Todd Alexander, Cabell County's administrative assistant for secondary
schools, said school officials believe the testing is having a
positive impact, but that it's still too early to tell if the tests
are totally effective at keeping students off drugs.

"I don't think we have enough data over enough years to determine its
effectiveness," he said. "All we have is anecdotal evidence."

Schools should be less focused on spending money to deter children
from drug use and more focused on educating students about harm drugs
cause, said Bill Piper, a spokesman for the Drug Policy Alliance, a
national nonprofit organization working to reform drug laws.

"Student drug testing is largely a stick that evaporates when the
student graduates or drops out," Piper said. "There's no intent for
the student not to use drugs because there is no education.

School drug testing also might create long-term problems for the
student who tested positive in his youth but cleaned up later in life,
Piper said.

Officials from all four of the area's drug-testing school systems say
that records of a student's positive test will either be destroyed
after he or she graduates, or not recorded at all in any meaningful
long-term student file. Only law enforcement officials would be able
to gain access to those files -- if a judge issues a warrant.

"There's an issue of [students] having to say that they flunked a drug
test 10 years later when they apply for a job," Piper said, "but
there's also an issue of having a paper trail."

Promises that records will be destroyed are perhaps not so reassuring,
he said: "I guarantee you, if President Obama had failed a drug test
in high school, everyone would know about it."