The most common way that people try to cheat a drug test is by using someone else’s urine or by substituting a synthetic urine. Yes, there are MANY synthetic urines out there available for purchase. Our collectors are highly trained and perform drug tests all day every day so they know what a “real” sample looks like.
Cheaters will try anything to pass a drug test. Usually they try to pass off someone else’s urine or synthetic urine as their own. After we catch them, we give them water and send them to a separate waiting room that quarantines them from any contact with others. We started doing this several years ago because we found that it was not uncommon for them to call someone to bring them some fresh pee.
We recently received a call from a client informing us of an individual coming to take a drug test. This individual had failed a drug test in the past and his employer gave him a second chance a few weeks later. If he could pass this one, he could get his job back. There was only one catch though…this drug test had to be directly observed.
Drug users are the most convincing people in the world; we see this every day at our clinic. Those that get the news they tested positive swear that they don’t do drugs, and those we catch trying to cheat try to convince us the specimen they gave us came out of their body, even though our training tells us otherwise. Its human nature to give people the benefit of the doubt, but this cant be done in the drug testing world. Training and science are always on our side. That being said, we have heard many excuses over the years after we catch someone trying to cheat a drug test. Most of them involve needing to leave immediately after we reject their first specimen; whether it be a doctor’s appointment, needing to get to work, or even sick relatives. Some people even claim that their grandparents pass away conveniently after we call them out for trying to cheat their drug test. Of course, we have no way of knowing if any of these situations are true, but the timing suggests they are not. We can’t bend the rules for anyone, even if it does mean they will be late for a doctor’s appointment or late to their job. If the person taking a drug test leaves before giving a specimen the collector will accept, it’s a refusal which is the same as a positive, no exceptions.