Posted on: Sunday, April 11, 2004
Products help many cheat on drug tests
By Adam Geller
Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA — Put 30 drug-testing workers in a room together for a few hours and it isn't long before they start trading strange — and somewhat indelicate — tales of urine collection.
Stories of specimens doctored to the most vivid hues of blue, green and purple, and others spiked with bleach or diluted with chewing tobacco. Talk of synthetic urine formulated in separate his and hers versions. And accounts of mystery concoctions ingested or added to try to ensure that urine does not betray the drug use of its provider.
"It's just amazing," says Sherri Vogler, who runs a Houston specimen collection company. "Beating a drug test has become a major industry."
Drug screening is a rite of passage for millions of U.S. workers, with more than 40 million tests conducted each year by employers and others. Most are done by collecting a urine sample, which people in the testing business refer to, mostly straight-faced, as their "gold standard."
The "positive" rates are low — less than 5 percent — suggesting that most people aren't using drugs, let alone trying to cheat.
But the prevalence of screening and the reach of the Internet has fostered a thriving cottage industry of entrepreneurs who promise to help workers beat the tests.
The federal government hopes to crack down on cheating by broadening testing of its employees over the next year to include scrutiny of saliva, hair and sweat. Some private employers have already adopted alternative testing methods.
"You want to create a new mechanism for cheating on drug tests, we're going to create a mechanism to catch it," said Robert Stephenson II, of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which sets standards for testing federal workers.
But tests using so-called alternative matrices are already fueling a new round of cat-and-mouse, as companies who specialize in test-beating scramble to market products they claim will foil hair and saliva screening.
"The government can go ahead and try to catch up and they will eventually, but they're going to have to do that through legislation. They're not going to do it through science," said Tony Wilson, of Spectrum Labs, a Cincinnati company that markets an ever-changing lineup of products designed to beat drug tests.
"I think there's version 7.3 out there right now. It's like software," Ted Shults, of the American Association of Medical Review Officers, says with grudging admiration.
But as new types of tests have gained acceptance in the past few years, Spectrum has also begun looking beyond urine. The company now sells nine different products, including Get Clean Shampoo intended to counteract hair tests and Quick Fizz tablets for saliva tests.
"It's not about defrauding anybody," Wilson said. "It's about protecting privacy, because people have no privacy anymore."
The constant morphing by Spectrum and companies like it has complicated the work of test labs and employers, said Shults, whose group is made up of doctors charged with reviewing the methods and procedures used in drug screening.
Labs and firms that make the testing technology say they've worked to screen out cheaters.
Quest Diagnostics Inc. reports that the most common type of adulterants were detected in just 0.02 percent of the 2.8 million tests it administered in the first half of last year. Substituted urine was detected in 0.03 percent of tests.
Alternative testing will make it even harder for cheaters, said Barry Sample, of Quest's corporate health and wellness division. Unlike most urine tests, hair and saliva tests are done under direct observation, making substitution difficult, he said.
But Sample said he doesn't expect cheaters and companies that cater to them to give up. "I think as the alternative matrices grow in their application in the industry and in the work force you will see more varied types of products that are available to attempt to help a donor cheat on their test."
