A donor came in for a drug test. He had face tattoos, saggy pants, and looked like a real-life gangster. I was on my toes, anticipating potential issues. He was very respectful as I asked for his identification information, answering all questions with “yes sir” and “no sir.”

We had a donor come to our clinic this past August and he presented our collector synthetic urine. We see a lot of synthetic urine around here; it can be easily bought on the internet (Google “urine luck”). We see so much of it we can usually spot it as soon as the donor is exiting the bathroom with the cup in their hand. We told this donor we could not accept the specimen, and his second attempt was also synthetic. After speaking to the employer, they directed us to do a third collection directly observed. When we informed the donor the next attempt would be observed he became very agitated.

We keep up with the number of cheaters we catch, it has averaged approximately 5% consistently for the past several years. And we don’t catch everyone, so you can conclude that for every 100 collections done 5 or more will attempt to cheat.

What bothers me is when we talk to other collection sites and ask how often they catch donors try to cheat many exclaim they have never caught anyone trying to cheat. This flabbergasts me, and it further confirms that with many clinics’ cheaters get away with it.

Cheating has changed over the years; some time ago cheaters preferred to get clean human urine and keep it fresh and warm until they could attempt to pass it off as their own. We don’t see nearly as much of that today; more commonly cheaters “go to” today is synthetic urine.

You can purchase a wide variety of synthetic urine, all manufacturers claiming theirs is guaranteed! I must admit that some synthetics are quite good at fooling the labs, we know this because we have sent in many specimens to the lab knowing it was synthetic and the labs reported it as negative.