MADRAS, Ore. -- If you've ever been hired for a job, you've probably had to pass a drug test. But here's a scary thought: Potentially hundreds of Central Oregonians have faked them, using a readily available substitute.
Synthetic urine is being sold right in our neighborhoods, and experts say that may be putting you in danger.
They're marketed to protect your medical privacy, by hiding pregnancy or diabetes from a potential employer, or for those who have a shy bladder.
But when it's used to fake a drug test, it becomes a crime.
"A product like synthetic urine doesn't do a community any good except promote drug abuse in our opinion," said Mandi Puckett, part of Jefferson County's Prevention Task Force and a prevention specialist with Best Care Treatment Services.
It's been sold under the table at some mini-marts and convenience stores for years. The synthetic product is not human or animal - it's entirely lab created, with creatines, pH, and other additives designed to pass a drug test, just like any normal sample.
"Synthetic urine is something that if people are using to pass who are long-haul truck drivers or they have a job where they're operating heavy machinery, that puts the whole community at risk," Puckett explained. "We all drive the roads. We all want to be safe."
When a citizen told the Jefferson County Prevention Task Force that it was being sold in Madras, they bought a sample, and sure enough, it worked.
"We tested it, and it did pass a drug test, so we became really concerned," said Puckett.
That's when she began working with Madras Police, the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office and the district attorney's office to educate local businesses that selling a product to falsify a drug test is illegal.
"A lot of the businesses were shocked, some of the businesses were like 'What's being sold?!' They didn't know.'" Puckett said. "Then we had other business owners who said, 'We have people coming in asking us what product is available to cleanse their urine, so we've actually had a spectrum of reaction."
"We were worried, and the task force was worried, that these businesses were not aware that this could potentially be a crime," said Jefferson County District Attorney Steve Leriche.
Leriche says he will prosecute these cases as Oregon statute allows (as a class A misdemeanor), and that buying or selling such products intended to falsify a drug test could land you in jail.
"Drug use in our community and a lot of communities is a problem," he added. "We're concerned that for people on probation or attending drug court or doing things that are trying to help themselves get out of their situation, they might be trying to escape detection by buying these over the counter products."
Doctors and labs have known about the product for years, but the problem has been finding an inexpensive way for drug testers to catch it.
Mandi Puckett started working with a urine testing lab to crack down on detection. She sent a fake sample to Sterling Reference Labs in Yakima, Wash. - the lab Best Care Treatment Services partners with, and the analysis began.
Using it, along with five or six other brands purchased online or in local stores, the lab began by identifying 12 compounds. They narrowed those down to three, and eventually, found one that should be present, but that's missing from every synthetic sample they tested.
It was a very exciting breakthrough.
"We were extremely pleased that we had a relatively easy test, relatively inexpensive test, that we were very very confident was picking up artificial urine," said Dr. Bert Toivola, Technical Director at Sterling Reference Labs.
However, that doesn't mean every drug test will automatically catch it. Probation officers, employers, and others requiring drug tests sill have to specify they want the lab to test the sample for artificial urine. At Sterling Labs, for example, that costs an extra $10 per sample.
But it may be money well worth it. In a survey of more than 500 employer-related samples, Dr. Toivola says, 5.7% tested positive as artificial urine.
"The overall positivity rate for drugs is only around 2-3%, and to have a 5.7% hit on artificial urine really just surprised and shocked us that it would be that high."
Perhaps even more shocking, Dr. Toivola says, for samples sent in to Sterling Labs specifically asking to be checked for synthetics, an astonishing 1 in 5, or 20%, were fake.
"So years later, when he said we have a panel test to catch it, it was really exciting to me," Puckett said. "To see something that started with a citizen saying, 'I think some of our stores are selling fake pee,' then us testing it and going through the whole process, to now see it kind of come full circle -- we're excited."
It's an issue that's now getting attention around the state.
After speaking with the Jefferson County Prevention Task Force, Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., wrote about synthetic urine in his newsletter in February 2009, and State Sen. Ted Ferrioli sponsored a bill (Senate Bill 588) to widen the scope of falsifying a drug test.
The bill died in committee, but officials hope it will be tried again. |
