What is an Oral Drug Test?

Watch out! It's Random Drug Test Day at your place of employment. Will your weekend of fierce carousing catch up with you? You've had no time to plan for this test. With a straightforward sampling of your saliva, your latest drug record will be bared. This is why employers and other institutions have embraced oral drug tests. They are very well-matched to randomized drug testing. They are also rapid, simple and cheap to administer. Because they are straightforward to use and much more hard to rig than some other methods of drug testing such as urine analysis, oral drug tests are becoming extremely common.

This is especially true for employers. schools, the armed forces and law enforcement. Reasons for testing can involve pre-employment testing, on-going randomized testing, post-incident testing where drugs could be a issue, reasonable suspicion situations where conduct indicates a possible problem, and return-to-duty testing.

Random testing is the most helpful form of drug testing for the reason that a random test provides the test subject little time or prospect to dodge the test procedure. Saliva based tests are perfect for random drug testing. They are rapid, simple to do, and not as invasive as other ways of testing that demand urine, blood or hair sampling.

While other drug testing methods such as hair or blood testing are considered the most reliable, oral drug tests that use saliva samples yield very good results. Moreover, as the testing method is a uncomplicated mouth swab, there is no discomfort and no embarassment involved as there might be in blood or urine testing. Saliva tests are very good at showing how recently an individual has tried drugs. This is particularly crucial in cases like automobile accidents. The police officer would want to know that the driver used cocaine shortly before the accident. The fact that someone may well have used cocaine a month before is not be applicable to the case.

Detection Times for Saliva Based Oral Drug Tests

1. Marijuana & Hashish: One to 24 hours
2. Cocaine & Crack: From the moment of ingestion to 72 hours
3. Opiates such as heroin: From ingestion to 72 hours
4. Methamphetamine and ecstasy: From ingestion to 96 hours
5. Benzodiazepines: From ingestion to 72 hours
6. Amphetamines: Immediately
7. Phencyclidine (PCP): Immediately

Downsides of Oral Drug Tests

1. There are some drugs that are not discovered with saliva tests.
2. Saliva drug tests are not accepted for use with the DOT Federal Mandated Drug Testing.
3. Bio-Hazard warning: as with all bodily fluids, care must be taken to handle the saliva sample with care though saliva is not considered a bio-hazard unless it is contaminated with blood.
4. Oral drug tests using saliva are not suitable for determining long term drug usage. That is why a lot of employers are turning to supplementary testing procedures in addition to saliva tests.



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