It was great to see Chuck Marting at the NDASA conference back in early March 2020 – this was the last conference held during this pandemic which more or less ended conference season. I asked Chuck “Do people cheat on drug tests.”
Chuck and his team at Colorado Mobile Drug Testing do a great job of finding the drug test cheaters. You may want to contact Chuck at coloradomdtesting@gmail.com to obtain his publication entitled “Is It Real? 7 Simple Steps to Recognize Synthetic Urine Specimens.”
If you Google “Cheating on a Drug Test” you get 13 million responses about cheating or preventing cheating. Quest Diagnostics reports 3 ways cheaters cheat: Substitution, Adulterants and Dilution. The Quest Diagnostics blog post explains each of these 3 ways to cheat on a drug test and how the lab can detect these attempts to cheat on the drug test.
When cheating on a drug test, drug abusers need to be aware of the cat and mouse game. There are products that may work for a period of time. And then the drug testing laboratories become aware of such products, and they impose countermeasures that tend to make the use of those products obsolete. In other words, the labs become able to detect these adulterants and substitution.
Synthetic Urine
One of the hottest topics in drug test cheating is synthetic urine. 24 million responses on Google. Lots of people are selling synthetic urine. They also sell heat packs and other methods to have the specimen heated to pass the temperature check. We see several companies advertising a Quick Fix Synthetic Urine Belt. MedSignals states on their web site “It comes with a waist harness and a nicely placed tube that allows you to replicate real peeing without actually doing it. It’s important to point out that the belt itself should not be microwaved, only the sample”.
Urine from the body should come out at 90 °F to 100 °F (32 °C to 38 °C). When the temperature is not in that range, there is a reason to believe the donor may have altered or substituted the specimen. In many cases it is now required for the donor to provide a second specimen as soon as possible. For Federal and DOT testing, this now requires the collection to be under direct observation.
Is Cheating on the Drug Test Illegal
If you get caught cheating, you can provide real urine from your body or face a refusal to test. If the laboratory finds your specimen to be adulterated or substituted this is considered a refusal.
In many States the sale of products designed to cheat on urine drug test is illegal. States are enacting laws to ban the sale of fake urine. Laws making it illegal to sell or use synthetic urine or cheat on a drug test are on the books in at least 18 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Catching the Drug Test Cheaters
Trained and professional drug test specimen collectors like Chuck Marting and his team are detecting the fake urine. Chuck uses his subtle investigative skills partially learned from his years in law enforcement. At Colorado Mobile Drug Testing approximately over 25% of the time, donors are attempting to cheat the drug test with fake urine. Chuck has done an excellent job in training his collectors to spot the cheaters.
Drug Test Collector Training
Professional training is needed for those getting into the drug testing business. An online course is available from MyDrugTestTraining.com. Live training for groups of 10 or more is available from Joe Reilly & Associates, Inc. For DOT drug testing it is required the collector become qualified under the DOT regulations for urine specimen collections. This qualification includes completing five mock collections. For assistance with these mocks to: DOT COLLECTOR MOCK COLLECTIONS
