When you are asked to take a pre-employment drug screen test, do you really understand just how they work?  You know if you pass or fail, but how do they measure your level of drugs in your system?  Testing laboratories will report a positive or a negative result based on minimum concentrations of drugs or drug metabolites found in the specimen provided.  Detection of drugs or the drug metabolites can be influenced by many different factors. The method by which someone is tested, the frequency of which the drug was used by the person, their metabolism, the type of specimen (blood, hair, urine or saliva), and the how long the drug can stay in your system all contribute to the levels found in the specimen.

Cocaine, ephedrine and amphetamine are some of the stimulants hat has been banned in many countries of the world, not only were they banned in business organizations, they have also been banned in sports and entertainment too. He reasons why these substances are banned is because they cause a number of psychological problems including; anxiety, nausea, depression, increase in appetite, and extreme fatigue, all these psychological problems are seen as agents that limits the final output in such corporations, hey decrease the productivity of man power and cause a company to suffer huge financial loss, but with a drug test, incidences of such problems have tremendously reduce.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration (SAMHSA) which is part of The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has established Mandatory Guidelines for Federal Workplace Drug Testing Program which most labs follow.  Most private employers can set their own standards for their tolerance when it comes to workplace drug testing unless they must adhere to Federal regulations like the Department of Transportation’s drug testing rules where employees in certain positions are subject to more stringent guidelines due to the nature of the job and its impact on the employee’s and the general public’s safety.  Drug testing by federal agencies must follow these Mandatory Guidelines for Federal Workplace Drug Testing.

Most private employers, while not required to follow these Federal Guidelines, find it behooves them to do so as it will help them should they find themselves defending their actions in court.

Labs that adhere to the Mandatory Guidelines for Federal Workplace Drug Testing use an initial drug screen followed by a second, confirmatory screen.  If you test below the cut off levels on the first screening the lab can’t report a positive result and then follow with the confirmatory test.  If you test above the cut off levels on the first screening but below the levels on the second test, the lab can’t report it as a positive.

The substances that are typically screened for by most labs are: amphetamines (speed, meth, crank, ecstasy), marijuana (Marijuana, hash), cocaine (coke, crack), Opiates (heroin, morphine, opium, codeine), and Phencyclidine (PCP).

For a URINE analysis the cut-off levels of nanograms per milliliter are as follows:

For a HAIR test the cut-off levels of picograms per milliliter are as follows:

For SALIVA swab testing the cut-off levels of nanograms per milliliter are as follows: