Description:
At the height of President Reagan’s war on drugs, he
attempted to achieve a drug-free work environment through an executive mandate
signed into law in 1986. The cat-and-mouse game began with drug users
attempting to game the system through various methods, including adulteration,
urine substitutions, and diluting the urine. Although the application of urine dipsticks
and conducting urine integrity tests can detect many chemically adulterated
urine samples, commercially introduced adulterants can go undetected and alter
the test results. Newly designed spot tests have, however, shown promising
results in verifying the accuracy of urine drug tests. The article discusses
the most current methods for detecting household and commercial adulterants in
urine samples.
Learning Objectives:
- Describe the two main urinary drug tests
- Describe methods used to mask the presence of illicit drugs
in urine
- Describe the process used to detect illicit drugs in urine
Author(s):
Dariush Yalzadeh, RPT (AMT)
Launched: 2020