4 – Why three types of testing? Which is best?

Saliva, Urine or hair drug tests?

Snort cocaine, and the drug enters your bloodstream and affects your brain within seven seconds. Minutes later, it’s in your oral fluid. In a matter of hours it‘s in your urine. A week or two later, it will be in hair cut from your scalp.

So, if you were tested shortly after a cocaine hit, using a urine test, the result would be negative, unless you were a habitual user. We’d need an oral fluid test. Conversely, if your oral fluid was tested after a couple of days, it would be negative even though a urine test would still be positive.

And if you needed to know whether anyone is a drug user, perhaps for a key job, then saliva and urine are useless if the person has abstained from drugs prior to the interview. Drug Hair Testing is the only suitable technology. That’s why there is a product for every application.

So which is best?

The answer is all three. But each one for the appropriate application—for other occasions one or other technology is probably a waste of time.

We can summarise as follows:

• Oral fluid detects very recent use, and impairment

• Urine tests detect drug use in the previous few days

• Hair analysis detects drug use in the last three months, but it can’t be used until a week after drug use.

There’s blood, sweat and tears, too, but they’re really only used in forensic pathology. Blood is too invasive and needs complicated laboratory tests, sweat is too easily contaminated, and we’re here to make sure your workforce isn’t reduced to tears.

If you really need to detect whether someone is under the influence of drugs, there is only one test you can use—oral fluid. And ‘under the influence’ is just what most workplace testing should be about.

If you’re screening new employees, then hair is the best.

And urine testing is the ideal, universal, cheaper ‘instant’ alternative.

The next questions take a closer look at each of these test technologies in turn and we’ll also tackle alcohol and solvents.

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