my wife had to submit to a urine & hair drug test

[mopaul]

to apply at a local casino. i understand the urine test detects recent drug use, but the hair test can detect drugs going back many years. she has nothing to fear, but i'm curious about this hair test.

anyone ever give a hair sample, or know anything about it?

[izzie]

1. I think the whole thing is bad. This to work in a casino?

Maybe to fly a plane but what are we coming to ?

[losdiablosgato]

31. More and more business insurance companies require drug testing

It is now done in a lot of jobs if you can prove you have a drug free work force is lowers your insurance. In fact at my job it is required.

[immoderate]

2. A friend who was a croupier in Vegas told me...

that everyone in Las Vegas is subject to drug screening, except the police. (This may have been changed.) I know you can beat the urine tests. My friend told me there is a shampoo which stymies the hair test as well.

--IMM

[dogday]

3. Hair Test last several months

http://www.psychemedics.com/

[sweetheart]

4. Heres a link from high times

There is a whole industry of products for passing drugs tests,
shampoos, and things to drink.

http://www.urine5.com/test/hair.html

[burn the bush]

12. even though they offer guarantees, they don't usually work

after spending 40 bucks for one, my daughter tested positive. However the thing they are using now is the stuff you buy at the store for canning. Cant think of the name, sur... Will have to ask if anyone wants to know.

You mix the whole packet with large amount of water and drink it. On the third piss after drinking it you will test clean. It temporarily holds the substance in it apparently. It's the stuff that makes gel.

have heard and known of several people who have passed on this method.

[catmandu57]

14. Pectin?

That's what it sounds like, anyway you can tell times are getting harder when they want to drug test for employment. During the nineties when everything was booming and the demand for employees was so big, drug testing was done with a wink and a smile.
It's getting so you'll be piss tested to scoop dogshit now.

[burn the bush]

15. Yes I think it is pectin but called suregel or something like that

found in your grocery store. I think the piss testing has gotten out of control too. I can see why you would not want a coke head to work for you. I've seen many a coke head do things that they normally would never consider to get the drug. That includes, lying, cheating, stealing, robbery, and other shit too.

But pot smokers are not in the same catagory.

piss test to scoop dog poop-thats funny

they are doing piss tests in my sons school now. They say it is random but if my son still went there i can guarantee that his random test would be weekly. The only random thing about it would be which day of the week it would be given. I know this to be true because they searched my son 6 times within the first 6 weeks of school. Never did they find anything. I finally told them to call the police in if they felt they needed to search him. They stopped.

[catmandu57]

18. Damn, I found a big fat roach

gone now though. I'd better not fill out any apps :)

[burn the bush]

20. lol

[anarchy1999]

17. Pectin.

n/t

It does work.

[bearfan454]

23. Certo

It works.

[burn the bush]

28. thats it Certo. Ok it's not much like shurgel or whatever i was thinking

it's certo and yes, it does seem to work.

[bennywhale]

5. Utter disgrace

that anyone should be tested in this way at all. What your wife may or may not have put into her body in the preceding weeks or months is nothing to do with anyone but her.

You can also get a DNA profile from hair i think which is even more worrying.

These tests are becoming ever more common, and i would simply refuse to have one and kick up a fuss.

Because its voluntary (ie you don't have to take the job) there can't be much of an outcry, and once it becomes completely the norm, you can bet the government will use it as it will have become acceptable

[KC21304]

6. They can see you producing your hair sample

but . . . .

[Hamlette]

7. hair tests are not widely accepted in criminal or other settings

it has been argued that hair can pick up drugs in the air so you don't have to injest them. We won't allow hair tests to deny unemployment.

To get a job is a much "lower" level of "rights" so its not illegal. The courts are not accepting them...at least not widely.

[Selteri]

16. Hair CAN and DOES pick up 'atmospheric contaminants

Hence it has been rules inadmisable in a court of law.

Being in the same building as someone who's doing coke, heroine or marijuana the fumes can bond to your hair. It is a flawed system just as the drug tests from urine can provide false positives for eating at a fast food resturaunt with poppy seed buns, taking aleave or Ibuprofene.

[wideopen]

8. find another job

I'll be damned if I would work at a place w/such bullshit rules. Why in the hell does it matter if you do drugs on your own time as long as you don't at work? This shit really gets to me, talk about invasion of privacy, I don't think it gets much worse than submitting bodily fluids and hair to get a job.

[Bouncy Ball]

9. You know what's funny?

People who work for school districts don't have to be drug tested. At least not the teachers and administrators. You'd think educators would need to be drug tested as much or more than anyone, since they are with kids. I'm not advocating it, in fact I don't advocate it for any employees except maybe pilots, etc. But I think it's odd.

Of course there's the matter of money. Drug testing isn't cheap and school districts barely have the money to fix their schools and buy textbooks, forget drug testing teachers.

[greenbriar]

24. Bullshit

Before teachers step one foot in the classroom, they are drug tested and background tested and fingerprinted!

[Bouncy Ball]

25. Oh yeah?

LMAO!!!

Where? They have their background checked, they might even be fingerprinted NOWDAYS (but not a few years ago), but drug tested?

Again, where?

[greenbriar]

26. well the urine sample they watched me produce

in 2001 was in Kansas


The blood they took was in Kansas

[Bouncy Ball]

27. Kansas, ok where else?

You said teachers get drug tested before they step foot in the classroom, so that assumed you meant everywhere in this country.

I'm in education in Texas and have taught in Georgia, too.

I was NEVER asked to take a drug test and we still don't drug test in Texas.

Oh the KIDS are randomly drug tested, but not the teachers.

Here's an article I found:

http://www.stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/177/lockney.shtml

It's about Texas.

Also this is from 96, but it's about Kansas. http://www.mediarelations.ksu.edu/WEB/News/NewsReleases/drugtesting.html

[Maru Kitteh]

30. What's funny is your little doggy daisy

How cute is that? Love it!

[Gyre]

10. She's got no rights to privacy as an applicant.

She has the option of saying no, and they have the option of saying no as well. Once she's hired, that's another story altogether.

Gyre

[Selteri]

19. Not really, in Michigan they started firing employees who

wouldn't submit to or who tested positive for nicotine.

[livinginphotographs]

32. Yes, she has that option, but my problem with drug tests

(I let someone else argue the civil liberties aspect) is that I can suck down an 8-ball and a week or so later I test clean. If I smoke a blunt at a party and take a piss test three weeks later, I test positive and don't get hired.

Who would you rather hire, the occasional pot smoker or the cokehead?

[burn the bush]

11. hair test

i think they have very expensive ones that can go back ten years, but that the ones generally used will only go back about 3 months.

I know of someone who passed one. He smoked within two weeks of the test but is very physical, and cuts his hair frequently. I don't know if the hair cutting has anything to do with it at all since they are dealing with the follicles. The physicalnes has some effect as I think it is hidden in fat cells so a fatter person will test positive far longer than a fit person.

[Norquist Nemesis]

13. What bothers me more is having to submit to a background

check...in order to apply. Not too long ago, I was filling out applications for various retail places. You can't fill out an application at the stores much anymore; they tell you to go on-line and give you the store number. But before you can even get to filling in the application, you have to agree to a background check that includes interviewing your neighbors.

Are you saying she had to submit in order to apply, or that she's in the running after an interview and now has to have a drug test. :shrug:

I can understand a drug test and/or background check if they are going to offer you the job (though I don't like the invasion of having to submit before being suspected). But, it's putting applicants over a barrel requiring them to agree to these just so you can fill out an application, IMO. Who's to say at some time in the future that by agreeing to that they can't do a check any time they choose for reasons other than employment? I don't trust them.

[NorthernSpy]

21. with hair tests, they usually use only...

... the 1 1/2" closest to the scalp. On average, human scalp hair grows a little less than 1/2" per month, though this can vary a lot: in four weeks, my hair grows about 2/3", and some people's grows even faster than that. So the detection period for that 1 1/2" of hair could reflect anything from the past 6 months to just the previous 8 weeks.

The standards for hair testing are not as firm as those for urine testing. Different substances behave differently in the hair shaft (some 'migrate', some don't), and the pigment content of hair can affect the extent to which it retains traces of various substances. Add in the all the different things that people do to their hair, such as bleaching, dyeing, and other chemical treatments, and you can see why there are a lot of unknowns.

In practice, I suspect that a hair test is usually just a test of whether one can lay off the :smoke: for twelve weeks.

[cheezus]

22. Would she have let them SEARCH YOUR HOME?

you know, to look for drugs or child porn or signs of other criminal activity?

after all, if she had nothing to fear...

[moondust]

29. Once asked to take a lie detector test

to work in an overnight CONVENIENCE STORE. Couldn't believe it. Told them to forget it, got up and walked out.