FIRMS OFFER WAYS TO FOIL DRUG TESTS

Type "beat the drug test" into an Internet search engine, and you come up
with more than 100 Web sites devoted to helping foil workplace drug screening.

It's part of a technology race, or as Barry Sample, director of science and
technology at Quest Diagnostics Inc.'s Corporate Health and Wellness
division, puts it, a marathon, pitting those who would defeat the screening
against those who conduct it.

The starting gun was a 1986 federal order establishing the goal of a
drug-free federal workplace. In subsequent years testing spread to federal
contractors and then into the private sector. "Now it's pretty ubiquitous,"
said Diane Cadrain, a lawyer who is legislative affairs director of the
Human Resource Association of Central Connecticut.

Rolling right along with workplace testing was the development of a counter
effort. "This is a cottage industry that has become increasingly more
sophisticated over the years," said Robert L. Stephenson II, director of
the division of workplace programs in the federal Substance Abuse and
Mental Health Services Administration's Center for Substance Abuse Prevention.

Both the testers and the would-be cheaters watch each other and try to
reverse-engineer what the other side is doing, he said. One company says on
its Web site that it changes the formula for chemicals to fool the
drug-testing labs every six to nine months, he said.

Early attempts to alter drug-test results were fairly obvious and relied on
products that were close at hand. And some of them still show up from time
to time, said Lottie Johnson, drug program coordinator for the D.C.
Department of Public Works, which requires drug tests for its truck drivers
and heavy-equipment operators. "Sometimes you smell it. It's like, 'Okay,
this is bleach,' " she said.

Products that pledge to beat the tests include shampoos that promise to
wash away any sign of drug use from hair follicles, as well as synthetic
urine, urine additives and detoxifying drinks or tablets with such names as
"Fast Flush" and "Clean Green."

And then there is the Whizzinator. Ads for it offer a $150 device that
straps on and comes with its own prosthetic penis (in five different skin
hues), dehydrated drug-free urine and heat pads designed to produce a
realistically warm urine sample, even under observation.

Sometimes product names remain the same, but the product is changed to keep
up with new technology. Vendors may offer to replace older, now detectable,
versions or warn buyers that product shelf life is less than a year.

According to Quest, drug testing is making inroads against drug use and
against the use of adulterants to beat the tests. The company is one of the
largest drug-test diagnostic firms, analyzing about 40 percent of all tests
nationwide each year. Of 6.3 million tests it processed in 2001, 4.6
percent were positive, down from a high of 13.6 percent in 1988. The
company also found that cases of adulterated samples were declining.

"There are two possible explanations," said Sample. "One is that testing
for adulterants is having a deterrent effect." The other explanation, he
said, "may be that the cheaters are finding a way around the tests. Maybe
it's a little bit of both."

Testing for adulterants has been widespread only since about 1998, when the
federal government issued standards of what constituted substituted,
altered urine. The definitions were needed because the drug-screening
industry realized that methods of beating the tests had become more
sophisticated. Nitrites and other oxidants began to show up in samples,
signaling that a chemical reaction had occurred.

Nine states have passed laws making cheating on such tests a criminal
offense. Virginia's House minority leader, Franklin P. Hall (D-Richmond),
whose legislative proposal became law in 2001, said he initiated it after
business owners complained about seeing signs advertising ways to beat drug
tests posted on telephone poles near their companies. He hasn't heard
complaints since the law was passed, he said, "so I assume it must be working."

In Texas, which has had such a law on its books since 1991, two
probationers in Bexar County were caught last year using the Whizzinator
and sentenced to 180 days in jail. They were also required to pay a $2,000
fine.

Workplace drug testing pays, supporters say. A study by the Office of
National Drug Control Policy estimated that the nation lost $110.5 billion
in productivity in 2000 because of drug use, and the Labor Department
estimates that 6.5 percent of full-time and 8.6 percent of part-time
workers are illicit drug users. Marijuana is the most frequently detected
drug, showing up in about 60 percent of the positive tests, followed by
cocaine. Critics of the tests say that they pick up more marijuana users
because the drug stays in the body longer, although Sample disagrees. "If
you have a casual marijuana user who shares a joint or two, the detection
time for that isn't much different than for cocaine or other agents," he said.

Critics fault widespread drug testing as an unnecessary invasion of
privacy. While it makes sense to test people in safety-sensitive jobs for
drug usage, many of the tests contribute little to improving either
workplace safety or productivity, said Graham A. Boyd, director of the
American Civil Liberties Union's Drug Policy Litigation Project. Employers
test anyway, he said, in an effort to reduce their workers' compensation
and insurance costs.

"The fact that so many people are doing so much to subvert the system"
suggests widespread disdain, he said. "You don't see that with laws about
embezzlement because there is a shared moral code that embezzlement is bad.
If you don't buy into that, you really are an outsider."