DRUG TESTING: IS IT A FRAUD, OR IS IT SAVING LIVES

Urinalysis. Peeing in a cup with someone watching. Whether you use drugs or
not, no one looks forward to the dreaded piss test.

"Fill this cup to this level and seal it with this cap, please. I'll be right
behind you, watching and listening."

Anybody looking for work these days has to be psychologically prepared
to face this challenge. But if you're a school athlete, in the military, taking
prescription drugs, working for the airlines, on probation or even in prison,
you may be asked at any time to drop your drawers and pee under close
supervision.

And then it's all over. Since you don't use drugs, you've got nothing to
worry about, right? Wrong.

"It's ruining people's lives ... some of the most straight-laced people you
would ever see," said retired Henderson, Nev., police officer Bill Adomeit,
whose future son-in-law has been accused of using methamphetamine by
the U.S. Navy on the basis of a urinalysis. An evaluation of the young man
by an independent drug counselor showed no signs of drug usage or
dependency.

"I've known this kid for a long, long time. He does not use drugs." Adomeit
said he is convinced a false positive on the test was caused by
over-the-counter sinus medications.

"I've been around testing, and I've been around evidence," the ex-cop
remarked. "People would be stunned if they knew how this stuff was being
handled." Sometimes, testing labs save money by tossing 25 percent of the
samples and, Adomeit claimed, declaring them positive.

Can this possibly be true? After all the psychological trauma of urinating in
front of an authority figure, are the samples just thrown away?

"Yeah, it depends on the lab and certification level," confirmed Matt
Gibson, lab supervisor for LabOne in Flagstaff, Ariz. "Some labs have
standard operating procedures that say if this doesn't match our
specifications (for temperature, color, specific gravity), yes, they will be
thrown away, knowing that they can't be used for legal purposes."

According to Greg Musgrave, director of Health, Safety and Training for
Compliance Alliance in Denver, cost could be an incentive for throwing
away samples that show suspicious positives. Verifying positives with gas
chromatography or mass spectroscopy is expensive, he says.

"When I send one in for a positive (confirmation), I eat the money for the
lab costs," Musgrave said. "I actually lose money on positives. We want our
clients to make sure that they have that option."

The initial screening for a general class of drugs is very susceptible to false
positives, he explained. Proper urinalysis procedure calls for
chromatographic or spectroscopic retesting of screened samples that
indicate positives.

Any testing agency wanting to avoid retesting suspicious samples would
simply discard them and avoid the extra costs by insisting that the initial
positive was accurate, Musgrave implied.

"I know that-I've heard they exist," he said. "I cannot tell you I've gone
somewhere and seen somebody do it."

Colorado has been at the focus of an increasingly intense debate about
urine testing in recent years.

In February 2000, Frontier Airlines flight attendant Julia Jones was fired by
the Denver-based airline because one of her random urinalysis tests
appeared to have been tampered with. Jones told the airline managers that
they were mistaken, that she doesn't use drugs and felt no need to cheat.
They didn't listen, so she's suing them to get back her job as well as lost
pay, not to mention her reputation. According to a Frontier spokeswoman,
"It's still in litigation."

"I've had no job for 16 months, I've spent $22,000 on an attorney. Our
house is in foreclosure, and hopefully, we'll be able to pay for our
daughter's college," Jones told USA Today. "It's appalling. You're going to
see more people come forward and stand up to this."

That's just what Deb Burch of Brush did when the nursing home where she
worked, Ebeneezer Care Center, wanted to test her because some drugs
intended for patients came up missing. She refused to drop 'em for the
management, so they fired her.

"It's the principle of the thing," said Burch, who describes herself as
"a little more active than average" within the Libertarian Party. "It's
a total invasion of my privacy. I've been a nurse for 30 years, and I've
never once had to take a drug test."

Ebeneezer did not ask for a urinalysis test when she applied for the job,
said Burch, who has collected many urine samples herself. "If they had, I
wouldn't have done it. I think this is going too far, to have to do this for
every job. Somebody's making a lot of money off it."

Ken Gorman of Denver, who was arrested in 1996 for distributing rather
large quantities of "medical marijuana" after he became well-known for
organizing monthly "smoke-ins" at the state Capitol, has been subjected to
urinalysis for almost five years. In January, he finally got off of parole and
was released from his ankle bracelet.

He's never failed a test and says that the only time he refused to take a test
was while he was imprisoned in Cañon City. Known as a legalization
activist, Gorman said he was offered marijuana "for free" almost every day
during his 16-month imprisonment. But there was no point in taking drug
tests while in prison-after all, what where they going to do, throw him in
prison?

"Excessive" is the way Gorman describes UA testing. "They've accused me
of flushing my system," he conceded. "I drink a lot of water in the summer."

Gorman, a Libertarian sympathizer, believes that urinalysis violates Fifth
Amendment protections against forced self-incrimination.

"When you tell me that you're going to take my urine, you're telling me
you're going to make my piss testify against me, whether I smoke pot or
not."

The American Civil Liberties Union, in Briefing Paper Number 5, agrees.
"Innocent people do have something to hide: their private life. The 'right to
be left alone' is, in the words of the late Supreme Court Justice Louis
Brandeis, 'the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by
civilized men.'"

But Supreme Court majorities have repeatedly approved of urinalysis under
specific employment or educational circumstances, such as Customs
Service officials required to carry guns or randomly selected public school
athletes.

In 1989, Justice Antonin Scalia-known for his virulent anti-drug attitudes
and rulings-was a dissenting voice when the Supreme Court upheld drug
testing requirements for Customs Service employees.

When the people subjected to drug testing were federal employees, Scalia
was concerned that they would have to perform "an excretionary function
traditionally shielded by great privacy" while a monitor stood by listening for
"the normal sounds."

However, when the people affected by urinalysis were public school
athletes, Scalia's attitude changed.

"The privacy interests compromised by the process of obtaining the urine
sample are in our view negligible," he wrote for the majority in 1995.

Beating the pee test

Most people think urinalysis tests are looking for actual drugs in the urine,
but that's not correct. According to Kent Holtorf, M.D., author of Ur-Ine
Trouble (Vandalay Press, 1998), the most commonly used drug tests are
enzyme immunoassays, which actually use a little bit of the drug being tested
for, bound to a sensitive enzyme, to positively signal the presence of drug
metabolites in the urine. In other words, it's kind of like a litmus test that
looks for drug leftovers in your pee.

Two companies, EMIT and Syva, profit the most from marketing drug
testing supplies, often mandated by governments at the local, state and
federal levels. But other well-known pharmaceutical companies such as
Roche and Abbott/TDX are also supplying the drug-testing market with
slightly different immunoassay tests. The Roche version uses a
radioactive-labeled molecule of the drug sought to trigger a positive, and
Abbott's uses fluorescence as an indicator.

Immunoassay tests are also the cheapest, ranging in cost from $10 to $40
per test, as compared to gas chromatography or mass spectroscopy, which
is extremely expensive. The latter is more precise and accurate, while
immunoassays are notorious for false positives, agrees Holtorf.

"The false positive rate has been shown to vary widely from 0.8 to 60
percent," wrote Holtorf, a court-recognized drug-testing expert. "Because
the consequences of a positive drug test are so severe, only the highest
forensic standards should be acceptable."

The Journal of the American Medical Association reported in 1988 that up
to 91 percent of urinalysis positives could be false.

Home versions of the discredited tests are now selling at drug stores and
over the Internet for people who want to test themselves or their children.

Just as urinalysis has become a multi-million dollar industry, so has selling
products purported to detoxify and cleanse one's system very quickly, or to
simply confuse the tests.

Holtorf cited studies of 50 herbal teas reputed to cleanse the urine, but "all
recommend drinking plenty of water with their product which often dilutes
the urine enough to cause a negative reading." The tea ingredients do
nothing to clean the urine, Holtorf concluded. Most people who worry
about urinalysis testing are concerned about THC metabolites from
marijuana, which can remain in their systems for weeks or months, or things
that might cause false positives, like poppy seeds, ibuprofen or Amoxicillin.

According to Holtorf, common household products like aspirin, vitamin C,
cranberry juice and water are the best detoxifying or masking agents
available.

"The ingestion of aspirin (salicylic acid) will reduce the apparent measured
concentration of all drugs tested by the EMIT immunoassay," Holtorf
wrote.

Large amounts of aspirin metabolites interfere with the enzyme required to
catalyze the signal reaction that leads to the conclusion of drug use, his
book explains. In a similar way, large quantities of vitamin C taken several
hours before a drug test will cause false negatives for marijuana,
amphetamines and barbituates.

Holtorf warns that users of cocaine or PCP should use vitamin C as a
cleansing agent every day except the day of testing, because the vitamin
causes the drug metabolites to flush out more quickly into the urine.
Cranberry juice is an excellent daily-use detoxifying agent for all drug users,
agree other authors of drug testing guides such as Ed Carson (Just Say No
To Drug Tests: How to Beat The Whiz Quiz, Paladin Press, 1991).

Drug testing has become so commonplace that people who would never
use drugs still find themselves worrying about and preparing for their
inevitable work-related urinalysis tests.

Mike, a non-drug user who lives and works in Colorado Springs, avoids
"certain things for several days before a scheduled test, such as alcohol,
poppy seeds, and being around hemp products, not to mention drinking
gallons of water to flush my system."

If non-drug users are taking such steps to protect themselves from false
positives, what are drug users doing to fool the tests? Just Say No's Carson
recommends drinking vinegar about two to three hours before the test to
achieve kidney shutdown: no drug metabolites will be excreted while your
kidneys (not to mention your taste buds) are recovering. Another trick
recommended by Carson is taking only hallucinogens such as LSD or
psilocybin mushrooms, the tiny quantities of which cannot show up on drug
tests.

"To my knowledge, there are no labs that look for hallucinogens," Carson
writes.

Drug testing facilities are hip to the trick of drinking lots of water, and they
have ways of determining if the sample provided has the correct "specific
gravity," according to Dr. John Mrozek, author of The Drug Screen Manual
(Paladin Press, 1998). But the worst that can happen is that the watered
down test will be declared "unreliable," and the extra time needed for
retesting might be just enough for a guilty drug-user to finish cleaning up,
Mrozek explains.

Selling substitute urine with which to fool drug tests has become a growth
industry. In March, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Ken Curtis of
Hendersonville, S.C., could continue selling all of the ingredients in his
drug-test protection kits except his own drug-free, frozen urine, which he
calls "liquid gold." Advertised for $69 on his web site, Curtis was selling his
clean urine, along with a small pouch, tubing and warming packet. Federal
law requires that urine submitted for testing must be between 90 and 100
degrees Fahrenheit just to prevent cold substitutions. His site states that
buyers "can use our kit in a natural urinating position ... and you cannot be
detected even if directly observed."

UA victims

Apparently, student athletes do not share the same constitutional
protections as the rest of us. In March, a rising star athlete in the Oakridge
School District of Oregon, 17-year-old Ginelle Weber, fought in court for
her right to play school sports such as volleyball, basketball and track
without having to submit to UA testing. Her case remains pending.

Florida Jaguars wide receiver Jimmy Smith is fighting for his pro athletic
career after failing a urinalysis test for cocaine following a routine traffic stop
in Tampa. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement considers its
testing procedures to be foolproof, but Holtorf writes that "there has been
no established correlation between drug concentration in the blood and
behavioral impairment for most drugs except alcohol."

According to Holtorf, common mistakes that cause false positives include
mislabeling, under-refrigeration and drug metabolite residues remaining from
previous uses of laboratory glassware.

"Griff," 40, an equestrian show-jumping champion who lives in a small town
on the Virginia-Tennessee border, complains that his doctor won't
prescribe the only medicine, oxycontin, that relieves his agonizing back
pains unless Griff submits to UA testing. Oxycontin is often sold on the
black market and has become known as "Hillbilly Heroin," and "Griff"
assumes that his doctor wants to make sure he's taking it instead of selling
it.

"It has been almost four years on this medication. Quitting this medication
cold turkey after this long could be very dangerous to my health, so I have
no choice but to sign the form," "Griff" wrote in an e-mail.

Washington, D.C., resident "DeWitt," an attorney and a former cocaine
user who has been clean since 1995, stands accused in the Superior Court
of the District of Columbia of cocaine use. He suspects a false positive
caused by a prescribed medication called Ampicillin.

"I'm not even given a chance to defend myself, or find an attorney in this
city," "DeWitt" wrote in his e-mail. "Since 1995, I've been able to stay
away from drugs of all types (many thanks to God). I refuse to say I was
using a drug that I hadn't used."

Oregon flight attendant Yasuko Ishikawa, who was fired by Delta Airlines
in 1999 after providing a urine test that the airline said had been tampered
with, decided to fight the accusation.

"I don't even drink or smoke," Ishikawa said. "I felt like a criminal, like,
'What am I going to do with the rest of my life?' Who was going to hire me?
I decided I should make some noise so I can protect other people."

J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, a Home Depot employee, reports that signs in many of
the hardware company's stores alert prospective job candidates that they
can be expected to be tested for drugs if they apply.

"Home Depot also lets you know 48 hours in advance of any test you have
to take, giving you plenty of time to get any traces of heroin or cocaine out
of your system. So really all Home Depot is doing is weeding out people
who smoke marijuana, not really dangerous drugs," Dobbs complained.

Holtorf concurs. "Drug testing also unfairly targets the least dangerous of
recreationally used drugs, marijuana. Many who use marijuana on a
periodic basis are switching to 'harder' drugs that don't last as long in the
system. For instance, after the Navy implemented drug testing, there was a
notable shift to increased alcohol use, which correlates with increased
workplace accidents and decreased productivity. And LSD is said to have
become the illicit drug of choice in the military due to its relative
undetectability."

Assumptions

Corporations are reluctant to admit that they often lose their best and most
promising employees because of "positive tests due to common foods,
over-the-counter preparations and prescription medications or due to
occasional marijuana use during non-working hours," Holtorf wrote in
Ur-Ine Trouble.

Of all commonly used drugs, only marijuana and Phenobarbital remain in
the system at detectable levels after 10 to 30 days. The rest, such as
cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and PCP, are gone within seven days..
So it becomes obvious that companies are really only trying to keep
marijuana users out; but false positives will almost certainly turn away an
equal number of non-drug users.

Studies comparing marijuana users to tobacco users in the workplace have
actually shown that marijuana smokers are at least as or perhaps more
productive than their tobacco-smoking counterparts.

"This study allowed workers a choice of buying marijuana or tobacco
cigarettes. Those who bought marijuana cigarettes, with some smoking up
to 20 per day, either showed no change in productivity or an increase in
work output with periods of maximal work coinciding with periods of
maximal marijuana smoking. Other studies showed similar results," Holtorf
reports. "Carlin and Trupin found daily marijuana smokers performed
significantly faster than nonsmokers on tests of rapid visuomotor, scanning,
tracking and set-shifting, and Grant found that better performance on a
variety of tasks actually correlated with heavy marijuana use."

There may be people whose job responsibilities are so heavy that they
should be performance tested for drugs and/or alcohol, but drug testing is
not a mass solution to workplace safety or even national security.

"The general public has been led to believe that mass drug testing is an
effective means by which to deter and treat illicit drug use, and has rallied
behind employment drug testing as a fundamental part of the 'War on
Drugs.' But no well-done study has shown that pre-employment drug
testing decreases drug use, provides a safer workplace, or is financially
beneficial to the employer," Holtorf concludes.