WASH YOURSELF OUT

The general strategy for passing urine tests is to increase your fluid intake and urine flow so as to dilute the concentration of drugs in the sample below the threshold of detection. An hour or two before the test, you should fill your bladder with a quart or two of water. Water is fine - contrary to popular rumor, there is NO evidence that goldenseal, vinegar, niacin, or vitamin C help.

Many people wash themselves out for several days in advance by drinking a lot and exercising, but there is no reason to think this is useful. In no case should you give your first urine of the morning, since drug metabolites tend to build up during your sleep.

While you're loading up on water before the test, you may also want to take a large dose (50-100 milligrams) of vitamin B-2, available in B-complex multivitamins. The purpose of this is to color your urine yellow, since otherwise you are likely to produce clear, watery urine, which makes some collectors suspicious.

Beware: Don't drink too much, since labs are on the lookout for overly dilute urine.

Dilution checks are required by the SAMHSA guidelines for federal testing . If your sample is found to be too watery, it will be returned as being too dilute. In this case, you may get a second chance to take the test. For this reason, you should wait until your test results have been confirmed before indulging in compromising behavior.

You can boost your fluid output by taking diuretics, which stimulate urination. Weak diuretics include coffee, cranberry juice, certain health food products and over-the-counter pills for pre-menstrual water retention.

If you're taking the test on very short notice, you may wish to resort to more potent diuretics, which are widely prescribed to treat high blood pressure.

Although strong diuretics, such as furosemide (Lasix®), are available only on prescription in the U.S., they can be had over-the-counter in Mexico and other foreign countries. Beware that they can be dangerous for certain persons, such as diabetics or pregnant women, and can cause problems if taken over extended periods. Diuretics can be detected in urine, but are rarely checked except for athletes.

The following regime has been suggested by a former army drug testing officer (Robert Freeman, "How to 'Beat' a Drug Test," High Times, Aug. 1988): Take an 80-milligram dose of Lasix; take a hefty drink of water; piss two or three times, then take the test. If you're lucky and didn't smoke too much pot, a good washout may get you past a test on a couple days' notice. However, regular smokers should allow more time if at all possible.

DRUG SCREENS?

TAMPERING

BLOOD TESTS

In some situations, such as accidents, blood tests may be used. Blood tests are a much better gauge of current impairment than urine tests because they detect the actual presence of THC in the system; however, they can be used to measure non-psychoactive metabolites as well. Blood tests generally register positive for THC for just a few hours after smoking, but heavy chronic smokers may be positive at low levels for a couple of days. Blood levels of THC above 3-5 ng/ml are a sign of likely impairment.

 If you have used marijuana in the last few days but are not currently under the influence, you should insist on a blood test instead of a urine test if at all possible, since you are more likely to turn up clean. On the other hand, if you have smoked recently, you may do better to take a urine test, since this will at least leave open the question as to whether you were under the influence at the time of the test. Also, urine doesn't turn positive until up to 3 or more hours after smoking for occasional users.

SALIVA TESTS

HAIR TESTS

One especially "Big Brother"-ish technology is hair testing, which can detect drug use for months, or however long one's hair has been growing (Skinheads note: samples can be taken from any part of the body!). Obviously, hair testing has no bearing on current impairment, but only past use, since it takes more than a few hours for drugs to be incorporated into the hair. While hair tests are highly sensitive to cocaine, their sensitivity to pot is less well established. One hair test study found that 85% of daily smokers tested positive, while only 52% of occasional smokers (1-5 times per week) did.

Not all employers who use hair tests check for marijuana. Although the FDA and scientific community have been critical of hair testing, that hasn't stopped employers from using it. A number of shampoos are available on the internet that purport to be helpful in passing hair tests. At best, these may be slightly helpful in removing drug residues that are deposited externally on the hair by exposure to smoke.

However, hair tests are supposed to detect drug residues that have been incorporated internally in the hair through the follicles, and which therefore can't be washed out. In order to avoid false positives due to passive smoke exposure, laboratories are supposed to wash the hair themselves before testing it.

LEGAL CHALLENGES

Prospective employees have no legal right to challenge pre-employment drug screens. However, workers who are already employed may be able to challenge their employers' drug testing plans in certain situations depending on labor law and local regulations. Avoid signing anything that gives your boss the right to arbitrarily test you; by stating your objections, you will strengthen your right to refuse a test. If you think you are being unjustly tested, you may have cause for legal action.

San Francisco, Berkeley and some other jurisdictions forbid on-the-job drug testing except in safety-sensitive positions.

We are sorry having to mention these devious techniques, but feel it is necessary to defend innocent people against wrongful accusations of drug abuse. We urge you to use this information responsibly and not as a way of hiding irresponsible marijuana use.

RESOURCES

www.fdaa.com. California NORML's Guide to Interpreting Drug Test Results has charts of drug test detection times. Drug testing aids are available at www.cleartest.com

TEST YOURSELF

www.quickscreen.com). Beware: drug urine levels can fluctuate up and down during the day, so it is possible to pass a test and then fail it a few hours later.

Privacy:

 Urine tests intrude on intimate bodily privacy. Mass drug screening violates the privacy of the majority of responsible employees in order to spot a minority of alleged drug abusers, many of whom are in fact not drug abusers at all. Government-imposed drug testing may be restricted by the 4th Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids unreasonable search and seizure and requires "probable cause" for search warrants. However, the 4th Amendment does not generally apply to tests by private employers.

Accuracy:

 No test is infallible. Surveys of drug testing labs have found remarkably high error rates from poor quality control. While good labs have added safeguards to minimize the risk of "false positives," even if error rates are only one in 10,000, the extension of drug testing to tens of millions of workers as proposed by the government means that many workers will be falsely accused of drug abuse.

The most common misconception about drug urine testing is that it detects drug-impaired workers, whereas it actually detects evidence of past drug use that need have no relation to on-the-job performance. Because drug tests are highly sensitive to marijuana, random testing can promote use of other, more dangerous drugs such as cocaine and opiates, which wash out in 2-3 days, or LSD, which is rarely tested. At the same time, most drug tests totally disregard alcohol, the nation's leading drug of abuse. Urine testing is tbus an inherently flawed technology: it rules out the most innocent off-the-job marijuana use, while permitting flagrant on-the-job alcoholiism.

Efficacy:

Urine testing has never been scientifically shown to be safe or effective at improving workplace safety or productivity, and studies indicate that the great majority of drug-positive workers are just as reliable as others (John Horgan, "Test Negative," Scientific American, March 1990; Dr. John Morgan, "Impaired Statistics and the Unimpaired Worker," The Drug Policy Letter, May/June 1989). Medically, the consensus of expert opinion is that drug tests are an inherently unreliable indicator of drug impairment (Consensus Report, National Institute on Drug Abuse, Journal of the American Medical Association, Nov. 8, 1985). Dr. George Lundberg of the American Medical Association has called them "Chemical McCarthyism" (editorial, Journal of the American Medical Association, Dec. 5 1986).

Alternatives:

The shortcomings of drug testing can be avoided by performance tests that measure actual concentration and reaction time instead of chemical residues. Computer video game tests that detect impairment due to drugs, fatigue, stress, or illness have been developed, but have not come into widespread use due to the government's partiality towards chemical tests.