NEW JERSEY GETS TOUGH ON THOSE WHO TRY TO FOOL DRUG TESTS

Absolute De-Tox. Get Clean Shampoo. The Wedge.

And, of course, the Whizzinator 5000.

As more employers require drug tests, a small but earnest industry has
cropped up, marketing about 400 products on the Internet and in
drug-culture magazines to help produce fake drug-free results.

But last weekend, New Jersey joined a handful of states with legislation
aimed at cutting down on drug-test defrauders.

"It is humorous to a certain extent, but it's also very serious," said the
bill's sponsor, Assemblyman Robert J. Smith (D., Gloucester). In 1997,
Pennsylvania made it a third-degree misdemeanor to sell or use "drug-free
urine for the purpose of or with the intent or knowledge that the urine
will be used for evading or causing deceitful results in a test for the
presence of drugs."

On Saturday, all products used to "defraud the administration of a drug
test" became illegal in New Jersey. Anyone in the public sector or under
supervision in the criminal-justice system - from an EMT or a school bus
driver to someone on parole or probation - who schemes to be clean is
guilty of a third-degree crime. Selling or manufacturing the product also
is a third-degree crime. The penalty is a fine of as much as $15,000 and
three to five years in prison.

Possession of such a device is a fourth-degree crime, with a fine of as
much as $10,000 and up to 18 months in jail. Outside the public sector, use
of one of those products is a fourth-degree crime.

"A lot of people are trying to beat the test," Smith said.

After hearing testimony from prosecutors, detectives and probation officers
about drug offenders' taking extreme and creative measures to evade drug
tests, Smith conducted research and was surprised at the ingenuity of the
products.

Evading drug detection has become increasingly sophisticated since testing
became standard in the American workplace in the late 1980s.

First, cheaters slipped salt, soap and bleach into urine, but those
substances are easily detected. Later, teas and fruity drinks, gulped in
great quantities in the hours before testing, were developed to mask drugs
or flush them out of the system.

'Clean' Samples

Now the trend has shifted to substitution - a complicated process of
substituting drug-free urine, either real or synthetic, for actual samples.

There's the Wedge, a banana-shaped container that straps on to the person's
posterior. The container is intended to be filled with drug-free urine,
with a tube so that it can be emptied into a specimen jar.

Yours for $30, and it can be shipped overnight.

The Whizzinator, at $149, works more comfortably from the front - and comes
in five skin tones.

Either device can be filled with "clean" urine - about $70, frozen or
dehydrated.

Or there are the detox drinks, additives such as Urine Luck and herbal
capsules.

To foil another type of drug test, a shampoo masks the presence of drugs in
hair follicles.

Fallible Products

But most of the products are fallible, said Robert L. Stephenson, director
of the division of workplace programs for the federal Substance Abuse and
Mental Health Service Administration, which oversees about 10 million drug
tests a year for government workers and others in regulated industries,
such as truck drivers.

And ingenuity is no substitute for honesty, Stephenson said.

"No one is going to argue that you are going to want someone who is
currently evading detection driving a school bus or operating a nuclear
reactor," he said.

"It's not just that they're a drug user, but they're trying to beat the
system," Stephonson said. "How are you going to believe anything else they say?"