What is a Drug Test and Types of Drug Testing (DrugTalk TV Ep 2)

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• published: 17 Apr 2013
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http://www.drugtalktv.com (DrugTalkTV Episode 2) I am going back to basics and starting my entire video series to be for a beginner who has no idea what drug testing is, and will work my way through the nearly 100 plus videos I have planned. I will have my e-book available by the middle of June 2014 that has all the planned video info and MUCH more for those worried about drug testing, and the capabilities of drug testing. if you have a question about drug testing that you want me to address in a video, please drop me a line at questions@drugtalktv.com Excerpted transcript: Welcome back, this is still DrugTalk TV, and today we’re covering a very basic video. What’s a drug test and what are the two main types of drug testing that occur. First, a drug test. A drug test is simply a technological analysis of a biological specimen. This may be urine, hair, blood, oral fluid, even sweat and toenails are starting to be tested for when it comes to drug testing. A lab will simply take this biological specimen and will test for either the presence of or absence of the drug or what is called a metabolite. A metabolite is simply a byproduct your body makes when it metabolizing (i.e. excreting) the drug from your system. Hence the word metabolite is derived from the word metabolism. Now drug testing in itself can test for things such as performance enhancing drugs such as steroids in the sports world (or youth athletes), illegal drugs in the employment world or even in the non-employment world when it comes to drugs like THC, which is Marijuana, or Cocaine, or even things that are legal, but perhaps are not legally prescribed. For example, when a nurse takes a Medical Professional Panel. All of these will be covered in much more depth in future videos so if you want to subscribe please click below. There are two types of drug testing done currently in the United States. Non-Chain of Custody Drug Testing and Chain of Custody Drug Testing. Now I’m going to go over these two types of drug testing, because odds are if you’re living in America a drug test may be in your future. (Unless you work for Congress). The type of drug testing is completely different than the means of drug testing such as urine, oral fluid, or hair, or the reasons for drug testing such as pre-employment, random selection, or post accident (including post incident), but have no fear I will cover those in future videos. First of all we are going to start with non-chain of custody drug testing. I am going to hit a few key points for you, and then we are going to move on to chain of custody drug testing. Here is the things you need to know: 1) It is non-standardized. This means it is going to be in a wide variety of situations when it will be used, there will be no standard forms, it might be a doctor’s office or a specific type of program that requires a drug test. But here is what you need to know…. 2) It is rare. The reason is it is rare is …. 3) It does not involve a possible legal outcome or decision to be made. Hey, it’s time for the good stuff now, Chain of Custody testing. This is the most prevalent type of drug testing in the world today, or in this case basically America because we’re the ones that drug test. Now, here are the reasons why Chain of Custody drug testing is the most prevalent. 1) Every single form is unique much like a finger print. Every form has a chain of custody ID number that corresponds not only to the company you are testing for, but also to that specific form 2) Every step along the way with a chain of custody form is signed for and documented. This begins off with the collector and you verifying that the specimen is tagged and bagged, and sent off to the lab. During that process you sign off and view what is happening, they sign for it, the courier signs for it, the lab signs for it, the scientist signs for it, and everything all the way along the process. This way when it does come time for a legal decision because you didn’t get a job because of a negative drug testing outcome (i.e. positive for drugs meaning a bad outcome-Charles) they have the resources to pull to prove that chain of custody was intact all the way through the process. In that case you are probably screwed! If a chain of custody is not intact when it gets to the lab they are probably not going to test it, and they will notify the company (and collector) and you will be contacted to go for a retest. At this point if you’ve done something illegal, the chain of custody is intact, and the results came out not in your favor, like I said earlier you’re pretty much hosed. It’s just time to move on. If you had a false positive and you know you didn’t do any illegal drugs (and those can occur), that I will be covering that in a future video.