Drug Screening Explained
- When screened for drugs, patients are tested to see if they exceed a certain cut-off level. i.e If the sample is Positive (+ve) or Negative (-ve).
- Cut-off levels vary from drug to drug but are based upon the research and guidance of SAMHSA (The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in the USA).
- Standard cut-off levels mean that all laboratories and rapid tests should test at the same level, so wherever a test is conducted, the patient will be assessed by the same criteria and results from one region are comparable with those of another.
The cut-off levels are set at a point that is high enough to rule out environmental contamination such as passive smoking of Cannabis, etc, and yet low enough to ensure that a patient must have abstained from the drug to test negative.Different drugs remain detectable in urine for different lengths of time. Factors including age, height, sex, weight, purity of drug, dose, frequency of drug use, etc, will all play a role in how long they remain detectable in a patient’s urine. Please use the following figures purely as a guide, as the upper limit can represent extremes:
| Alcohol (Breath / Saliva) | 1 hour per unit consumed |
| Amphetamines | 2 – 6 days |
| Barbiturates | 3 – 8 days |
| Benzodiazepines | 2 – 14 days |
| Cannabis (THC) | 14 – 28 days (One off use can be 3-5 days) |
| Cocaine | 2 – 5 days |
| Methadone | 2 – 7 days |
| Methamphetamines | 2 – 6 days |
| Opiates | 2 – 5 days |
| PCP | 2 – 6 days |
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