On-the-Job Drug Testing Spawns a Host of Tactics and Products for
Avoiding Detection

By Deb Riechmann Associated Press Sunday, March 9 1997
Washington Post
1150 15th st. NW
Washington DC. 20071 0001

Bob's alarm went off at 4:30 a.m. on drugtest day. Time to start his
23step scheme to flush traces of marijuana from his body.

Over the next six hours, the 37yearold electrician alternated drinks
totaling nearly a gallon of water, coffee, Gatorade and Coke with 13 trips
to the bathroom. He also popped a B2 vitamin to give his diluted urine a
genuine yellow hue.

"I've got it beat," boasts Bob, a regular potsmoker from Birmingham, Ala.,
who passed that test and several others. He spoke on the condition that
only his first name be used.

Faced with everwidening use of workplace drug tests, thousands of drug
users like Bob are devising doityourself strategies and spending millions
on commercial products such as dehydrated urine in an attempt to preserve
their jobs or pass preemployment tests.

They adulterate their urine samples with eye drops, dish soap, bleach,
vinegar, drain cleaner whatever is under the kitchen sink that might
mask the drug or invalidate the sample.

"Is it true? All I need to do is drink a little bleach?" one woman called
to ask Allen Francois St. Pierre at the National Organization for the
Reform of Marijuana Laws. He quickly advised her that would be dangerous.

Others call tollfree numbers to order bouillonstyle urine just add
water. Some purchase powdered and liquid urine additives that claim to
camouflage drugs. Still others rig their underwear with hoses, or tape
hidden plastic bags filled with drugfree urine to their bodies.

Such efforts notwithstanding, drugtesting experts say the odds of avoiding
detection are getting longer as lab work becomes more refined.

Labs can spot waterlogged workers by testing the density and properties of
the urine, according to Tom Johnson, a spokesman for SmithKline Beecham
Clinical Laboratories Inc., one of the biggest drug testing firms. Labs
also can detect foreign substances, and temperature strips can catch people
substituting clean urine for their own.

"There's not a single product out there, including the best ones, that
somebody hasn't told me failed them," said Anne Watters Pearson, who
founded the ButterfieldJay Foundation in Oklahoma City to counsel people
faced with urine testing.

Products and schemes to beat urine tests are flourishing as drug testing
becomes more widespread in the United States.

The share of major U.S. companies that test for drugs had risen to 81
percent by January 1996, the highest level since the American Management
Association's annual survey began in 1987. Under federal law, 8 million
rail, maritime, airline, pipeline and other transportation workers are
subject to mandatory random drug tests.

"The drugtesting industry has grown, and we have grown with it," said
Richard Haddad, whose Georgia company, Health Tech, gets 500 calls a day
from people asking about herbal detoxification teas, urine sample additives
and other products. "It's a multimilliondollar industry, there's no doubt
about that."

Mark, an emergency medical technician in Pennsylvania who smokes two to
three joints a month, says he was tested 25 times when he was a truck drive=
r.

He passed 18 times. Two of those times he dumped additives into the
collection cup to be on the safe side. He was either clean the other 16
times, or the amount of marijuana in his system was not high enough to
result in a positive reading.

Two of his seven positive tests were caused by painkillers. Five other
times he was retested or suspended without pay for as long as 30 days.

Mark, who also asked that his last name not be used, does not put much
faith in the herbal cleansing teas.

"You have to drink a gallon of tea in two hours. It's hard to choke down
that last bit," he says. "It tastes like a big bag of lawn clippings smells=
."

Some products aimed at beating drug tests apparently are being marketed as
dietary supplements, which are allowed to make general claims such as
"purifies the body" as long as they do not claim to cure a disease, said
Arthur Whitmore, a spokesman for the Food and Drug Administration.

Makers of dietary supplements do not have to prove their products are safe
or effective, and the FDA cannot take them off the market unless it proves
they are dangerous.

There are millions of potential buyers: 10.4 million adults reported using
illicit drugs during the past month, and 71 percent of them were employed,
according to the government's 1995 National Household Survey.

SmithKline conducted more than 4 million drug tests last year up from
2.5 million in 1992. The share who tested positive for drugs declined to
5.8 percent from 18 percent in 1987.

"Once employers start testing, the word gets out," said Mark de Bernardo of
the Institute for a DrugFree Workplace.

Experts estimate 1 percent to 2 percent of workers who are tested drink
fluids to dilute their urine or try to adulterate their sample. If the lab
detects a foreign substance, many employers will treat the adulteration as
a positive test result, said Richard Etter at ARUP Laboratories Inc. in
Salt Lake City, which handles about 30,000 drug tests a month.

Etter said a third of drug users who face testing are recreational users
who will quit. Another third will seek treatment to stop using drugs. The
rest will seek jobs that are not subject to testing.

Those jobs are getting harder to find: Drug testing is not just for big
companies anymore. Small and mediumsized companies increasingly are
following suit, Etter said.

=A9 Copyright 1997 The Associated Press

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