The dumnest reason for a law...

[xyzzy]

House lawmakers change course on smokable hemp
http://wr.al/1FkRp


Smokable hemp and marijuana look and smell the same, but hemp contains only
trace amounts of THC, the psychoactive compound in marijuana. Only a test
can tell them apart.

The law enforcement community says both should be banned because, if they
can't tell the difference, they can't claim to have probable cause to
believe a law has been broken.

[michael anderson]

Isn't there an instant test officers could use they could carry around?(Im not sure, I just read once there was).

As a related aside cbd oils and all the other cbd related products are legal here, but our hospital was very clear that if anyone fails for THC on a random or for cause drug screening, they CANNOT get off by saying they were using hemp/cbd products/etc. they aren't saying you can't use that stuff; they are simply saying you can't fail any of our drug tests for marijuana and if you use this stuff you better be sure you can get under the thc limits our panels use.

I used to be a medical review officer for hospital systems and a large state agency, which meant I was paid to interpret the results of employee drug tests and recommend what tests/panels should be ordered in certain circumstances. Also when a pt had a positive I got to call them up and 'lock them in' to a story so we could use their reported history with the test. Some of the people were hilarious in what they said...…

One guy kept failing for ETG(it's a metabolite of alcohol degredation and he was in a program that had a complete abstinence mandate because he had alcohol use d/o and was caught drinking as an OR nurse at work in the past). I said "dude, your positive again for ETG. Did you consume beverage alcohol recently". His answer- "no but I used some vanilla flavoring for cooking recently". Who the rsfck, when asked a point blank question like that, responds with such an immediate clear response like that. I told him I didn't believe a word he said. Then he said "I use a lot of vanilla flavoring". I said "your answers are getting worse and worse". I recommended that the hospital fire him and the nursing board did take his license, but one reason I recommended that was because he was so damn dumb and I wouldn't want an OR nurse so dumb working in such a setting.

then I got word that he went back to a residential rehab for health professionals and got his license back as long as he is in a monitoring program again, but he kept failing for kratom. Which is now illegal in alabama(but legal in lots of states).

[dotsla...@gmail.com]

Wonder how much we spend on all this testinh? Typical workplace tests will pop pot smokers but miss on cokeheads because coke processes out of the system so quickly.

Fwiw, that's why coke is so popular in our military. Just saying.

What did we do before having these tests? Oh, right, we judged folks by how well they performed at their jobs. Weird.

Cheers.

[Ken Olson]

We'll get back there, eventually.

[michael anderson]

I mean employers are free to use whatever guidelines they want....there are reasons they do(and don't when they don't) have these anti-drug or law drug policies.....

You are right on cocaine having a rather limited detection time in urine, but it also deposits in hair very nicely. Sometimes black guys can even test positive a couple weeks later after one big binge. I've ordered lots of 7 panel hair tests suspecting coke when I was an MRO and my clients(hospital system, the state agency) would come to me and say an employee seems erratic.

And that's what I told my employer- they'd come at the guy and said "look a positive hair test means you are a chronic user and use a lot" and I had to tell them not necessarily for cocaine. Opioids yeah....because opioids don't deposit in hair as well.

I miss being an MRO. There was so much intrigue to it. Like I knew they were scheming to pass their tests and it was my job to figure out how to nail them ha.....a lot of times I knew how but the employer just didn't want to spend much to do it with the right panels or tests.

[michael anderson]

there are so many new drugs of abuse out there now that the addicts are 'winning'. We *can* test for most of them, but it's expensive and you have to really know what you are looking for.

Like a lot of impaired professional programs will have someone enrolled in it whose drug of choice is opiates/opioids. If I was setting up random panels for this person in addition to all the typical opiates and opioids(to include synthetics and suboxone and methadone) I'd throw in things like kratom and a few other abusable non-opioid mu agonists. So he/she knows they are going to get busted for using oxycodone or whatever, and they have a suspicion I made add anything that is going to get close to hitting mu receptor. So they are smart. they say "rsfck it, I'll just start abusing mephedrone or one of it's similar drugs/cathione type drugs- "not my favorite but at least I'll get high in some way"......so I'll order random drug additions on their panel like that for people who abuse coke and meth in the past, but it would just be too expensive to add everything for everyone...…..

the stuff you can get off the internet in the name of research chemicals is truly scary. All these bzds that may or may not test positive on most confirmatory tests for bzds, but they are more dangerous and scary. Deaths and near deaths, bad interactions.

In the end though a lot of them resort to their original DOC and that's what takes them down.

[michael anderson]

My last call in such a capacity was about 2 years ago. I just have too much work within our group(what with the VA stealing all our groups potential employees) keeping me too busy, but I still remember it. It was a flight attendant, and she was enrolled in an impaired worker monitoring program through her very large airline.

She was randomly tested once a month, occasionally twice though. She'd been in the program awhile I remember, and so her testing frequency was reduced. You don't tell them exactly what the maximum time you are going to test them in a month is because then of course if they know they aren't going to be tested.....

I still remember her testing frequency. 1 time each month for the last 7 months, and then the month in question she was tested like the 3rd and the 16th. So twice. There is a computer that generates the testing pattern of course randomly, but we can go in and override it and add tests for various reasons. It was like the 24th, and it was a Monday(just back from a weekend). And I was supposed to review a certain number of cases for our clients each month and make addl recs.

I threw a urine extended opioid panel in there with a really low limit. Everything about that scenario(coming back from the weekend, "I've already been tested twice this month, they can't do it again and by the start of the next month I'll be clean"...)was pointing to her using that weekend.

Was it right? Should I have done it? I dunno….I mean I had a contract to perform a certain role.

She tested on Monday and I got the positive confirmatory on Wed.

I guess she recognized the number(and she knew she had used). nervous as hell when she picked up the phone. I just said "this is Dr Anderson. Do you know what I'm calling about?". Tears and anger...kind of a sobbing yell "I wasn't supposed to be tested again".....I just said "it's all right, the world isn't over". I could barely understand a word she said throughout the conversation, but I got the admission of guilt. She kept asking me to order hair and I didn't because I truly don't think she would have been positive there too. "it was just once, just once".....

but nothing in her contract with the monitoring program said we couldn't test her a third time in a month. I baited her and set up the testing history such that she felt super confident she would be tested once most months and rarely twice, but never three times. And then when she had probably looked at the calender anticipating that weekend late in the month after that second test in the month made her thinking she was 'done'......and then me ordering the perfect test she wasn't going to be able to pass?

I don't know what happened to her. That wasn't my role. I just set up the panels and interpreted the results. Maybe she got fired. maybe she just had her monitoring contract with their impaired workers extended a bit.

But the whole thing just left me feeling kind of uneasy and unpleasant. Trying to 'catch' people and then having to call them quite frankly blows. there is not a lot of satisfaction in that. It was just a perfect game of 'gotcha' and I set it up and then dropped the hammer, but why? wtf did she do to me?

And I've never done that type of work since

[Damon Hynes, Cyclone Ranger]

Man. That's tough.

[michael anderson]

yeah and I still struggle with my role in it. That's partly why I don't work anymore in that capacity.

A hospital system out of atlanta area mostly asked me recently to help set up their drug screen standards(pre-employment and random and for cause policies and panels). I just said- "look, what are your goals? to catch people? to get people fired? to make sure your providers aren't using drugs or alcohol at work to improve patient safety?"....and they looked at me like they haven't even thought about these questions or the differences.

for six months 4 years ago I was a consultant for a consortium of allied health and 'other' medical providers and their monitoring program(physicians and dentists and pharmacists have their own). I had this podiatrist I had to investigate, do the usual screening and workup, and then make recs to his board. He comes to me for the meeting completely hairless. It was 97 degrees outside and he had longsleeves on(I ask him to pull shirt down and of course the dude has shaved his arms). I ask him if he has shaved his legs too. "no, I just don't have much hair". What bs.....

I think about taking his eyebrows but that's not enough. No point in asking about his public hair as I knew that would be shaved.

He says I'll need to get a court order to take fingernails. court order? this isn't a legal process I tell him. I tried to explain to him all I do is make a rec to his board.

So I just order a basic 7 panel drug screen. Urine. He looks at me like I was a dragon that spit fire. He had spent all this time shaving his body and then pre-empted me by telling me I couldn't take nails without a court order(court order? wtf?) and I ordered the simplest most rudimentary easy to beat test there is...…

but he didn't beat it.

Where did John Dillinger go when they were looking for him? Back to his freaking home. The one p[lace he guessed they would not look....and they didn't.

This guy is worried about how he will get out of and evade sophisticated hair and nail tests. Spent hours altering his body and researching how to opt out of certain tests. But he didn't expect me to nail him with a test he could have beaten by just abstaining for a few days and water loading.....because he didn't think I would be thinking along those lines.

I post all this because the the drug testing world and the combatants in it mirrors lifes battles in so many ways. It's the pitcher against the hitter with a 3-2 count...what pitch does the hitter think is coming, what pitch does the pitcher thinks the hitter thinks is coming, etc....

the users will come up with new drugs and new ways to take them. And we on the other end will come up with new and better ways to detect them, and at lower quantities. but when you strip away all the technology there is still a human element to it

[J. Hugh Sullivan]

On Wed, 24 Jul 2019 18:44:31 -0700 (PDT), dotsla...@gmail.com
wrote:

>Wonder how much we spend on all this testinh? Typical workplace tests will pop pot smokers but miss on cokeheads because coke processes out of the system so quickly.
>
>Fwiw, that's why coke is so popular in our military. Just saying.
>
>What did we do before having these tests? Oh, right, we judged folks by how well they performed at their jobs. Weird.

Right, because there were no potheads then - just a few alcoholics.

Youngsters don't do very well telling me how "it used to be". You had
to be there.

Hugh