Hair drug testing - widely accepted in courts

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Hair drug testing - widely accepted in courts

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed

Drug tests and in particular testing hair for drugs is becoming far more commonplace, particularly across western Europe and North America. This method of drug testing has a significant advantage over other detection methods such as urine testing, blood tests and saliva testing, in that it provides a far wider period of time for which drugs can be detected. (This is commonly known as the detection window). It is possible to detect drugs for several months - even years if the hair has been allowed to grow for that amount of time, the test requires 3 inches of hair one inch representing 30 days. In most cases however, tests usually involve 90 day detection (thats 3 inches of hair): This compares to typically 4-5 days for fluid based testing (or in severe cases of marijuana misuse, one month)

Approximately 50 strands of hair are needed for successful hair test results. This equates to the thickness of the end of a shoelace, meaning that the majority of would show no obvious signs that any hair had been taken unless their hair is particularly short.

The cost of hair testing is greater than urine based tests - which are the only other viable method of achieving laboratory standard results. Testing using blood is not widely available partly due to the difficulties in taking a sample in the first instance.

A typical hair drugs test costs in the region of £60-£70 for preparation of the sample (which basically means turning the hair from a solid to a liquid) and then an additional £40-50 per drug type required for detection. This contrasts to an approximate cost of £60-75 for laboratory testing of urine which will detect illegal substances across all drug classes.

One of the most common questions how to pass a hair drug test. Very simply, there is only one sure-fire way in which to guarantee this - Don’t take drugs!

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