Do you have the case law reference? I would love the read it.

Thanks

Most likely. Depends on your state, what you signed and blah, blah, blah. Stupid? Yes. Inappropriate? Yes. But since the results weren’t back, it sounds like it was just being mean.

The results specifically list any drugs found. The results are positive only to an impairment level, i.e. it won’t show up if you had a quick drag at a party on the weekend but it will show up if you took something last night as it is still in your system. If you are on medication, you can provide a copy of the prescription to offset certain positive results.

Anyone dumb enough not to avoid drugs the night before their medical doesn’t deserve a job in my company. No exceptions. An interesting point is that 25-30% of our candidates fail their drug screen (and that includes people of all professions).

Hello all! I operate a drug/alcohol collection facility. I have read a great deal of information here on this blog and find it interesting that most people are very uneducated about drug testing. Even those that claim to have worked in a “drug testing place” seem to have it all backwards.

1. Mythbusters was right – poppy seeds can create a false positive. What they don’t tell you is that GC/MS (that’s Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry) will see it as a different opiate from, say, Heroin or Morphine, or Hydrocodone. They also don’t tell you that an MRO (Medical Review Officer) will weed out any false positives. In addition, it does have to reach the federal cutoff concentration limit to be considered “positive”, and that is 2000 ng/mL of the metabolite, not the parent drug. Limits can be found here: http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/rules-regulations/administration/fmcsr/40.87.htm

2. Second hand positives: You’d have to be closed up in an airtight space with pot smokers while everyone else smoked pot constantly before you’d show positive on a real drug test. I say ‘real’ drug test, because some testing procedures out there are not FDA approved, or they may be done in labs not certified by the HHS or SAMHSA. Second hand smoke at a party will not make you positive – but it’s not advised that you be around it anyway for your own health and well-being.

3. They’ll want to watch me pee. I doubt it. I know I don’t want to. This only happens on DOT tests, and only if your first specimen is “cold”, that is not between 90-100F. Then, despite what Hollywood may tell you, it has to be a person of the same gender conducting the observation on the second collection.

For more information on what collectors, labs, and MRO can and cannot do, look into 49 CFR Part 40.

1) military drug testing and for-profit drug testing have little to do with each other. FP is based on lowest cost per false negative: so they don’t get sued by their clients. If they can use OTC tests, believe me, they will.

2) Whether Marijuana should or should not be legal isn’t the point. Nor is whether alcohol is worse. For most companies, policy is policy, as it should be. Possibly a better/more tolerant policy could be written, but it’s not HR’s job by a long shot.

3) If the company takes federal money, they are mandated to test across the board, not just safety-related.

4) Many drug tests will come back false positive (even at 1/10,000,000 chance, that’s still a lot of people, and most testing is closer to 1/10,000 false positive), and B-sample testing may or may not be any better.

5) You had better believe that a good test can spot co-incident marijuana use. Else you would have a drug test that only screens heavy use, which isn’t much use. Long-term use is generally not discernible in the urine: you need skin or hair samples for that.

6) If you want to know how accurate your vendor’s test are, try to get them to give you the actual values, and then YOU have the B-samples re-tested. I guarantee 2 things: your vendor will resist it to the point of quitting, and you will never look at tests the same again.

I worked for a lab developing drug tests. WE weren’t tested, because we knew how bad the tests were….

Yes poppy seeds can cause someone to test positive for opiates. However, most drug testing companies know this and have adjusted the sensitivty levels. However, living with someone that smokes, attending a party with smoke. The answer is NOPE, no way. You were smoking and got busted.

Oh and if there is something someone is taking and it comes back for it (migraine meds), then it is subject to a medical review and the medical director will clear them based on a valid rx. Taking your wife’s or dh’s rx is not a valid rx.

Along with drinking alcohol, which is, while arguably far more damaging for both psychotics and the general population, legal.

There is a very long list of legal things that ruin your lungs, make you a dangerous driver, or a more dangerous co-worker, than marijuana. Marijuana was made illegal by a government official (Harry Anslinger) who was a racist and hungry for power. He was what would now be the head of the DEA. Along with Hearst he put out a lot of inflammatory articles in the 1930’s about marijuana turning teenagers into crazed sex-killers and convincing blacks and latinos into thinking they were “as good as the white man”. So far some twenty million americans have been sent to jail on marijuana related offenses, 11 million since 1990. All of them are having their lives ruined because of that one man and his army of patsies enforcing his arbitrary rules.

Congratulations on joining his flock.

It’s an amazingly harmless drug compared to alcohol… Actually I think alcohol is one of the worst – you can see it well here in Finland where alcohol is the drug everyone uses.