Drug Test Kits

Drug tests occur a lot in a variety of environments from at home to at school or at the work place, in a sports league, at an insurance company, there are many places which require you to participate in a drug test so knowing how it all works is really important.

 Now, anyone can purchase cheap drug test kits online for a pretty decent price and that is the reason that home tests have gotten a little more popular.
 In the work places, drug tests are becoming even more frequent than ever. A survey was managed and the results showed that over 80% of companies admitted to testing their employees on at least one given time and a lot of those companies use drug test kits on a regular basis.

 The accuracy of the tests and the speed of the results is amazing so there is not much of a reason for employers to pass up the opportunity – especially when another report has discovered that on average, employers lose $7 000 every year from employees that are drug users (whether it be stolen money, health benefits, missed work, etc) so you need to try and keep the drug users out of your work place.

 So first off, let’s go over what type of drug tests there are. There is urine, hair follicle, blood, and saliva drug tests and each one of them have their advantages and disadvantages over the other and we will go across that in this article.

Urine Test
 The urine drug test is the most used drug testing method and is fairly accurate. Urine drug tests have a good accuracy level and are best for those who are looking to find new drug use because urine tests can’t date back much farther than a week in most cases. Urine tests would be recommended for testing on a weekly or bi weekly basis because of that fact. A lot of work places utilise the urine tests.

 The kits are not too expensive, ranging from $15-20 each but there are ways for people to cheat them.
 Urine tests would work best if the testing times were random and there was no early notice to the person getting tested. If someone knows about the test ahead of time and they know that they are going to fail, they will likely do something about that so that they pass the test, especially if there is something at risk like an acceptance to a school, new work position, parental visits, or similar.

 By notifying the person of the test ahead of time, you are just allowing them to have a chance to find a way to cheat through it so you might as well keep it on the down low until the day of the test.

 People can use fake urine, bring a bottle of a friend’s urine, dilute their urine by drinking a lot of water, powder urine, or even a fake penis to cheat through the test.
 Due to the fact that the test is usually done in private (collecting the sample), they have the opportunity to slip a bottle out of their pocket and empty it into the sample cup. There are actually fake penises that people can buy and you just squeeze the shaft of the penis and out comes the urine. The powder urine just needs you to add water to it and then it turns into urine.

 So now that you know how people can cheat through the test, if you can make sure that does not happen, maybe it is the right test to be used.
 You probably want to know how long drugs stay in your system. Most drugs stay in your system for 3-7 days but marijuana and hashish (THC) can even stay in your urine for up to a month if you are a heavy user, as well, the same goes for PCP and benzodiazepines. Codeine, morphine, alcohol, LSD, and amphetamines all clear out of your system within 3 days usually but most other drugs take up to a week.

 Hair Follicle Test 
 Hair tests are not quite as common as urine tests and do not get used nearly as much as they probably should. There are a lot of advantages to using a hair follicle test instead of a urine test. The results date back further, it’s nearly impossible for people to cheat, and the accuracy is almost perfect. Collecting the sample is easy, doesn’t need to be done in private, and the chance of someone cheating on the spot is not there. Hair follicle tests can find drug usage from up to 3 months prior and even more in some tests. Basically, when you use any kind of drug, the residue and chemicals will get scattered in your body and you will have it in your urine, saliva (very short period of time), blood, hair, and a few other places but they are not tested. How it works is that the residue or chemicals will find their way to your scalp and will grow in with your hair and fill your head with the chemicals.

 These test kits cost a bit more than the urine ones and are around $50-70 each depending on what store you buy it from online. Even with the expensive price, you still have to go through the hassle of mailing the sample you take to a lab and wait for the results. Hair usually doesn’t get contaminated with drug residue or chemicals for about 7-10 days so it may not always be the best option either. In some cases, hair follicle tests are stronger than the other tests because of how far it can date back and the accuracy.
 As far as people cheating on the hair drug test, it is not very common because you can’t just pull fake hair from your hair. The popular product for cheating through a hair follicle test is shampoo which detoxifies your hair of the chemicals. While this may work temporarily, you should be a little sceptical. No product is probably able to remove the chemicals from beneath your skin surface so the chemicals will just grow out within a day or two again anyways. As well, even if you did use it, it would show no chemicals in the test results and that is a little odd because throughout the day, your hair accumulates chemicals and normal shampoos do not always remove all of them so there should be something in the results. Not to mention that if you sweat after using the product, the chemicals will sweat out on your scalp and get in your hair again.
 All drugs (except LSD which can be discovered for up to 3 days after usage) can be found in hair samples for up to 90 days prior.

Blood Test
 Blood tests do hold up in accuracy but are obviously not ideal most of the time due to the difficult of taking the sample. To get a sample for a blood test, you need a health care professional to perform the process. To add to the hassle, after getting the sample taken from the person, you have to send it to a lab and wait for the results to be returned. All of these things will add a lot of time and costs to get your results.

 In most cases, a blood test is not the best one for whatever reason the test is needed to be done. Almost everything gets out of your blood within a few days of usage. The only differences would be Phenobarbitals which can last up to a week and marijuana which at heavily use can show up for up to 2 weeks. Blood tests can’t really be cheated but there is not really a use for them anyways except for the more severe and professional fields possibly. It could be possible that a professional fighter would have to go through a blood test a couple days before the match.

Saliva Test
 Saliva tests are pretty accurate and the kits are pretty inexpensive as well. The main downfall with saliva tests is that you can’t really find usage that far back – for most drugs, it will show for up to three days prior but for marijuana it is usually under a day. Saliva tests are also referred to as oral fluid tests and the samples are easy to take and it is very difficult for the person to cheat through the test so it would work great.

 There are quite a few areas where a saliva test would work perfectly. Whether it be police or truck stops on the highway, random testing at work, school, or home, or to test an employee when they seem to be acting a little funny.  The kits are also pretty cheap and are usually anywhere from $1-5 depending on your supplier and order size. The accuracy is still around 97% so there shouldn’t be much of a big deal for most situations.

 We can agree that every drug test kit will work better for a different reason and some of them are affordable for those on any budget and they all hold a rather strong accuracy. The difficulty of collecting the sample and time to wait for the results varies depending on the test but you could have the results as early as a few minutes if you decided to go with the basic test but those results would probably not be as accurate as the ones that are provided from a lab.

 The most common drug test is the urine test but in a lot of areas, the saliva test is becoming even more popular because of the convenience it holds. It is believed that the accuracy of the saliva test has around 96-98% accuracy, the hair follicle test has around 97-99% accuracy and the urine test has around 96-97% accuracy. The problem would be that certain tests are more prone to being cheated on (especially the urine test) so you have to keep that in mind. The blood test would most likely be 100% accuracy due to the process of getting the sample and results.

 You can purchase saliva, urine, and hair follicle tests for personal use online and they are mostly at a reasonable price but the hair test is a fair bit more. Collecting the samples is easy for the most part – with the saliva test, you just get an oral fluid swab from the persons mouth, with a urine test, you just get a cup filled with urine, and with the hair test, you just get as many hair strands as possible from the persons scalp which are at least 1-2 inches from the scalp.

 To conclude, we can all agree that these kits are easy to access and there is an amazing amount of information on the subject and this article will probably assist you in choosing what test kits you should purchase or informing you on how to cheat through the test you are about to face – not that it is recommended. Referring back to the earlier mention of how much employers lose on average because of drug users in their work place, you can understand the concern at hand.