Drug use among people of all ages has reached alarming levels in our country (from pre-teens to senior citizens). What does this have to do with our society? You might wonder… Many of society’s problems stem from drug abuse; for example, theft, family violence, street violence, vehicular accidents, poor work performance, poor school grades, and absenteeism are just a few examples.
For many families, using home drug test kits for immediate drug testing as part of an overall prevention strategy for kids who have never tried drugs or who have experimented a few times but aren’t addicted to drugs or the culture that surrounds them makes sense. However, when children are addicted to drugs, the drug culture lifestyle, or both, what you require may be beyond the scope of what typical drug test programs administered at home are intended to accomplish on their own. If you believe you need professional help, don’t hesitate to seek it right away.
Governments, businesses, and organizations all over the world have discovered a new and popular form of “quality control,” which some may refer to as class management. What exactly is that quality control, you ask? Drug testing is required. Yes, you read that correctly: drug testing. Drug testing is used to literally weed out those people who are unsuitable for certain jobs, such as law enforcement. It is also used to identify those who require rehabilitation as a result of drug use in employees.
Drug testing can be done in a variety of ways. The sensitivity of a test, or rather the type of test that you end up taking, is determined by the type of job you are applying for or even in at the time. Urine tests, the most basic of all, only tell you if you’ve used drugs while the drug is still in your system. So, if the drug only stays in your system for eight hours and you take the urine test in nine hours, the drug you’re concerned about will not be detected. Urine tests are typically used for entry-level or low-level jobs. If the drugs being tested have a short enough half-life, they may be missed.
Blood sample drug testing by resources is commonly used by drug testing labs of all types because its sensitivity is so high and it will show drug usage that urine samples simply will not. This makes the ideal choice for random drug tests because it lasts until the very last trace of a drug runs through someone’s body. However, blood tests take longer to complete in the lab and are more expensive.
Insurance companies prefer saliva tests because they can be completed whenever the insurance agent and the other person meet. Saliva tests, like blood tests, take some time in the lab to complete and are also more expensive. Finally, and seemingly without fail, there is the hair test. Hair tests are almost impossible to avoid, difficult to fool at best, and used for the most vulnerable jobs. It doesn’t matter if you’ve shaved your head; the hair test can use hair from any part of your body. How accurate are these hair tests? A time line of any type of drug that has been introduced into your metabolism and when it was introduced can be made for up to six months. The drugs are held in the hair cells, which form the hair on your physical body. Because drug testing has gotten so much better over the years, it has become common knowledge that if anyone ever wants to consider working for the government or other sensitive jobs, any recreational drugs should be completely out of your system for at least six months. In other words, you are drug-free, and no drug test will reveal anything.