Drug Test Detection Times
DRUG TEST DETECTION TIMES
How Does Drug Test Detection Work?
Depending on the type of test you are using, the drug use history you can learn will vary. Our drug and alcohol tests find drugs in hair, urine, or oral fluid (saliva). Below is a table of drug test detection times - when you can first detect the drug and when the detection period ends. Both the beginning and ending of the detection period can vary based on many factors, including weight, tolerance for the drug, overall health, metabolic rate, age, and urine pH. We hope this guide can help you select the home drug test that is right for you from Home Health Testing.
How to Use This Table: Say, for example, that you suspect a child has used cocaine in the past 8 hours. Using our chart below, you can see that a saliva test or a urine test could both determine the child's recent drug use. A hair test would be inappropriate at this time - the cocaine would not make it into the hair for another 5-7 days.
All the drugs in the chart below will generally appear in urine 2-5 hours after use. Please be aware that the exact time depends on many factors, as emphasized above, and may vary. Please also note that these detection periods refer to when a drug test will work best. You may, for example, be able to find cocaine in urine 5 days after use with a urine drug test. It is just increasingly less likely that you would and certainly not 96% accurate when you get further from the detection period below. Please consider these as your rules of thumb for detection.
***This information is taken from government sponsored sources and from the Package Inserts of our Saliva, Urine, and Hair Tests. Again, this guide should be taken only as a general guide - detection times will vary based on a number of factors including frequency of use, route of administration, body mass, and age.
| Drug | ...appears in Saliva | ...disappears from Saliva | ...appears in Urine | ...disappears from Urine | ...appears in Hair | ...disappears from Hair |
| Amphetamine (AMP) | early as 5-10 min after use | 72 hrs | 2-5 hrs after use | 2-4 days | 5-7 days | 90 days |
| Methamphetamine (mAMP) | early as 5-10 min after use | 72 hrs | 2-5 hrs after use | 3-5 days | 5-7 days | 90 days |
| Cocaine (COC) | early as 5-10 min after use | 24 hrs | 2-5 hrs after use | 2-4 days | 5-7 days | 90 days |
| Opiates (OPI) | 1 hr | 7-21 hrs | 2-5 hrs after use | 2-4 days | 5-7 days | 90 days |
| Marijuana (THC) | 1 hr | 12 hrs | 2-5 hrs after use | 15-30 days | 5-7 days | 90 days |
| Phencyclidine (PCP) | - | 1-3 days | 2-5 hrs after use | 7-14 days | 5-7 days | 90 days |
| Benzodiazepines (BZO) | - | - | 2-5 hrs after use | 3-7 days | - | - |
| Ecstasy (MDMA) | - | - | 2-5 hrs after use | 1-3 days | 5-7 days | 90 days |
| Barbiturates (BAR) | - | - | 2-5 hrs after use | 4-7 days | - | - |
| Methadone (MTD) | - | - | 2-5 hrs after use | 3-5 days | - | - |
| Oxycodone (OXY) | - | - | 2-5 hrs after use | 2-4 days | 5-7 days | 90 days |
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