One of the largest drug testing labs (and the lab we use) is Quest Diagnostics. Each year they produce a report called the drug testing index. In that report is the positivity rate of drug testing based on the thousands of tests they process each year. 2022 results have not been released yet, but results from 2021 show a 4.6% positivity rate overall.
There’s no end to what cheaters will present to our collectors as urine. We recently had a donor come in and present us with a cupful of what appeared to be yellow mouthwash. Our collector came to this conclusion based on the “minty” aroma it was emitting.
Reputation is defined as: a widespread belief that someone or something has a particular habit or characteristic.
A donor recently came in and gave a specimen my collector would not accept. I am not sure of the exact reason, but the most common reasons are that the specimen’s temperature is out of range or suspected substitution (we get lots of synthetic urine around here.) The collector explained to the donor that we could not accept the specimen because we did not believe it came from his body, and he was welcome to provide another specimen, but, if he left the clinic, it would be a “refusal”. The donor became a little belligerent and wanted to argue that he was not refusing to take the test – he gave us a specimen and we were the ones refusing to accept it. We tried to explain what a “refusal” meant as it relates to drug testing. In the drug testing arena (as in most industries) we have a unique vocabulary that has definitions that differ from society in general. Here are a few of those terms and how they are defined by our industry: