EVADING THE URINE COPS

Entrepreneurs Are Profiting From Faux And Real Urine, Sold To Job-Hungry
Pot Fans Facing Drug Tests

In the "war on drugs," for every laughable government and corporate control
action, there's a creative pot-culture reaction.

So when companies, police and public service managers started demanding
drug tests from employees, creative chemists saw a market for ways to help
heads keep their jobs and/or stay out of jail.

Some drug residues can stay in the body for months. Although most marijuana
alkaloids leave the bloodstream within 48 hours, traces remain in hair.

Most drug tests, however, are done on the cheap: urine tests, given at the
time of hiring or forced at random under various levels of supervision.

But for people who can't stay away from weed long enough for their livers
and kidneys to clean out their systems, there are ways around drug tests,
some of them more effective than others.

Pot-culture magazines offer a variety of test-beaters.

High Times magazine offers a drug test hotline at $1.95 (U.S.) per minute
that advises callers on the latest testing procedures, how long it takes
for drug residues to leave the body, which substances can give false
positives and cleansing products that can get drug residues out of blood
and urine.

And there are test-foiling kits on the market. Makers of a product called
"Urinetheclear" tell fearful smokers: "Stop wasting your money on
adulterants and detoxifiers. Labs now test for their presence. Instead,
give them what they really want, genuine drug-free human urine, prepackaged
in a concealable vinyl pouch with routing tube."

The $70 kit comes with a heating element that keeps the urine at body
temperature for up to 10 hours. The urine is shipped frozen or dehydrated
(user's choice), with enough for two tests.

Then there's synthetic urine. The Whizzinator, sold out of Long Beach,
California, offers its fake product kept warm and in place by a similar
heated body pouch. The phony pee is supposedly so authentic it passes even
the most rigorous laboratory testing.

The Urinovator goes even further: It comes with a plastic penis that looks
so real it can't be shown in a family head magazine, the manufacturer says.
This little miracle of science and art costs $100 (U.S.). Its moving parts
are reusable.

Clear Choice, in Alpharetta, Georgia, also sells synthetic urine and a heat
activator. Its makers remind customers that the sale of real human urine is
banned in South Carolina, Texas, Nebraska and Pennsylvania, but there's no
law against selling the faux stuff.

With another dig at the competition, Clear Choice warns that heating pads
can burn tender skin in sensitive places and can ruin a sample by keeping
it too hot or too cold. Instead, their product is a small bottle with its
own little heat activator that's kept stashed in a pocket.

For people who don't want to go to the trouble of stashing real or fake
urine in their underwear, there are several lines of detoxification juices,
drinks, shampoos, tablets and health food supplements.

They're not cheap. Formula 1, rush-delivered from Health Tech in
Alpharetta, Georgia, by the same people who make the Clear Choice fake
urine kit, costs $35 (U.S.) per bottle, but there's a small discount for
buying in bulk. The stuff is supposed to work in an hour to get marijuana
residue out of blood and urine. It lasts for up to five hours and comes in
"tasty pina colada or cran-apple cocktail flavour."

Urine Luck, made by Spectrum Labs in Cincinnati, Ohio, is a little vial of
chemicals that is supposed to kill off any pot residues before the testee
hands over the sample. The same company makes Quick Fizz one-hour
detoxifying tablets, Absolute De-Tox Carbo Mix one-hour flush drink, home
drug test kits and Urine Luck "Pass Any Drug Test" T-shirts that are $5
with an order, $20 on their own.

Presumably, only the unwise wear these shirts to work or while crossing
international borders.

Some other entrepreneurs offer drug test kits to let smokers know whether
they'd pass a government or employer drug test. Most look like pregnancy
tests, and within a few minutes the user can tell whether there's enough
marijuana, cocaine, amphetamines, PCP or opiates in their system to trigger
a positive.

"For two years now, I've been putting off applying for a job as a long-haul
trucker because I like to smoke on weekends and before I go to bed. I find
I can't sleep without a couple of hits," said one local unemployed
potential customer of the Whizzinator.

"But I can't imagine going into a drug test with a bag of fake urine
strapped to my groin. What if I got caught? I'd feel like the biggest
asshole in the world."