Nicotine Drug Testing
While a lot of employers (survey says about 81% of
reviewed) admit to drug testing their employees to discover if anyone is using
drugs such as marijuana, hashish, ecstasy, heroin, cocaine, PCP, and more, not
that many people actually know how many companies really test their workers for
nicotine as well. While it may seem absurd as almost everybody smokes nowadays,
this is actually a rather common practice in many corporations. As a matter of
fact, one person was fired from testing positive for nicotine and she attempted
to sue the company.
To focus on details of the nicotine test, you
obviously know what nicotine is, and your probably get a lot of it in your body
daily, but do you know what Cotinine is? Cotinine is the metabolite of nicotine
which is a result of being processed in the human body. If there are nicotine
metabolites in your body, it makes an indication that nicotine has been inhaled
or made way into your body. This is similar with various drugs as every drug has
metabolites which are what drug tests look for to discover drug use of the
person being tested.
So in a sense, the nicotine test is really a
Cotinine test. Now, you should take a look at the various types of test kits
that are available for testing for tobacco use.
The main test that is used to
check for nicotine usage is the urine test. Nicotine urine test kits are very
inexpensive and can be purchased for $5-15 each depending on where they are
purchased from. The accuracy of nicotine urine tests is around 99% so you don?t
have to worry about inaccurate results.
The exact same technology is used
with a nicotine test as is used for a drug test. However, nicotine has its? own
testing device as to drugs. The nicotine test kit is trained to look for
Cotinine which is the result of your body processing nicotine.
Looking
for a presence of Cotinine is essential to discover if the person being tested
is using tobacco or has been as far back as the test can date. Cotinine can be
discovered in a urine sample up to 2-4 days after the tobacco was
used.
Same as the drug tests (except for LSD), a hair follicle test can determine if tobacco
was used up to 90 days prior to the test. However, it is not really essential to
date that far back for tobacco use.
Even though most corporations will not
require a nicotine test to be performed on their employees, there are some
places that do so. It could be possible that a devoted NCAA level basketball
team coach will not allow smokers on the team, but the most popular reason for a
nicotine test would probably be to check if your teenage kids are under the use
of tobacco or not. Finding out early if your child is using tobacco or not can
really help eliminate the chance of further use if you can seek help for him or
her at an early enough state. A nicotine addiction is definitely a hard one to
kick and with so many kids lighting up, there is a good chance that your son or
daughter will do so as well.
The two other advantages to a nicotine test
would be that it is confidential, and able to be used in your own home, as well,
it is pretty much as simple as a pregnancy test is.