Every drug leaves its traces in the body of a user for a while. During this time it is possible to track it down via drug testing, which is analysis of a person’s urine, blood, saliva, hair or some other type of biological material. As drug abuse significantly worsens one’s working capacity and, therefore, results into reduction of productivity, mandatory drug screening is used in order to determine a person’s reliability and responsibility.
Normally drug testing is undertaken:
- For athletes before competitions;
- In case of involvement into any kind of accident leading to damage (e.g., car crash);
- During pre-employment stage or at workplace at various positions. Especially including people’s safety.
If a person holds a job with high amount of accountability and taking drugs may seriously endanger depending people or activity.
Athletes usually need to go through testing to ensure they have not influenced their own physical capabilities with any kind of dope, or performance-enhancing drugs. This is often required for college-level and professional sportspeople. Among drugs they get tested are anabolic agents, growth factors, beta-2 agonists, diuretics, stimulants, cannabinoids etc. In addition to temporary or permanent career and reputation crash, taking PEDs leads to a great number of health issues, from increased heart rate and blood pressure and anxiety to close to fatal like risk of heart attack, strokes, serious mental disorders etc.
For participants of various accidents drug testing is held straight-away to find out whether the cause of human failure, if such has occurred, is a drug a person involved may have consumed. The screening taking place normally regards checking for alcohol, controlled substances and recreational drugs.
Pre-employment drug testing is held before hiring a person to confirm that a potential candidate is not a drug abuser. Such a screening is taken the more seriously, the more responsibility is expected to be put on one’s shoulders. This regards particularly high-profile positions where public safety or significant resources are at stake. Among the drugs one normally gets tested for are either five- or ten-panel drugs, mostly ‘street’ one like marijuana, cocaine, amphetamine and methamphetamine, alcohol, opiates and sometimes some prescription drugs.
On-the-job full or random drug testing is also performed by many companies to check upon employees. Though it is often limited to a narrow range of substances like alcohol, prescription or recreational drugs, it is necessary to be ready to fulfill the requirements imposed by one’s workplace.
For drug tests listed above mostly urine or blood samples are required, but companies may require a person to provide any other sample such as hair, sweat etc. It is important to bear in mind that though in the former three half-life of a drug is quite short, hair may preserve drugs up to 90 days. One should learn what kind of drug testing policy a particular company has to be ready to comply with its requirements.
Taking drugs is harmful not only because of major damage it does to one’s physical and mental health, but also because it deprives a person from taking numerous prestigious jobs where significant career and pay growth can be obtained. If one starts taking drugs already having a good job, it puts the person into long distress caused by necessity to regularly undertake drug testing. However, many employers offer their employees support in treatment of drug addiction so that they could have healthy productive life of high-level quality.
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