By Melissa Smith


The use and abuse of outlawed drugs harm many aspects in the society. Businesses, sports, workplaces and transport just to mention a few, are the societal aspects that the negative effects of drug abuse affect. Drugs have the capacity of reducing productivity, reducing revenues in businesses, and putting people at grave risk. On the contrary, outlawed and performance enhancing drugs give professional athletes an advantage which they do not deserve over their opponents. When in search of Substance Abuse Counseling Bozeman MT should be given priority.

Drug test can be described as a methodological examination of specimen to determine the presence or absence of specific drugs or their related metabolites. Mostly, the samples that are used for tests are biological. They include hair, urine, breath, blood, sweat, and saliva. Conditions that could lead to a drug test being carried out are very many.

Some employers require that potential employees must undergo a drug test when applying for employment, especially for sensitive positions. Besides pre-employment drug screening tests, there are those who conduct random workplace drug testing for the purposes of lessening the impact from low productivity, safety concerns, and drug abuse. Normally, the aim is to identify on-the-job drug abuse so that appropriate measures can be taken.

Additionally, there exist college or professional athletic screening that is conducted with the aim of identifying availability of performance boosting steroids. For the case of sports, these tests are conducted through urinalysis, which has the capacity to reveal the composition of a drug in the body system a long time after the wearing out of its effects. The time taken for specific drugs to wear out of the body system differs.

When a drug test is being done, the professionals who are concerned might not limit themselves to the use of particular testing methods. First of all, there is a number of methods that vary on the level of detection, sensitivity, accuracy, and duration after use. Therefore, one technique may fail where another one may succeed. Availability of substances such as marijuana, nicotine, methamphetamines, cocaine, heroin, and alcohol can be detected through urinalysis.

Saliva drug screening is also known as a mouth swab test. So far, it is an easy laboratory test and is less susceptible to adulteration. It is applied when a person is interested in recent drug use since it can only detect most usage within a few hours. It detects usage up to 3 days which makes it inappropriate for long term drug usage survey.

Drug screening is supposed to be conducted within labs with aid of appropriate apparatus and skilled manpower. A good number of labs with certifications can be used since they fulfil this requirement. Two steps are necessary for a legitimate test. Immunoassay is the initial step whereas the second one is known as confirmatory or gas chromatography mass spectrometry. The two are used together for increased specificity and sensitivity. The combination of the two steps reduces chances of false negatives.

Finally, certain factors determine the time taken to prepare the results. Negative results for most workplace drug tests are quite fast since they can be received in few days. Actually, they can be delivered in a few hours. However, additional tests may be needed for positive results. Therefore they can delay for up to one week or a few days.




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