Screening for Nicotine Increasingly the Norm

February 11th, 2011  

Stop smoking hypnosisWithout question, cigarette smoking has negative consequences for your health and adds to health costs for both individuals and employers. Yet cigarettes are also a legal product that people can choose to use in all 50 states. For businesses, it is a vexing problem, and more and more businesses are choosing to screen for nicotine before they hire…much to the displeasure of current smokers.

The NYTimes covered the situation yesterday. They note that some states have rejected smoker bans and some have not, but that regardless, a trend is emerging:

There is no reliable data on how many businesses have adopted such [non-smoker] policies. But people tracking the issue say there are enough examples to suggest the policies are becoming more mainstream, and in some states courts have upheld the legality of refusing to employ smokers.

Steven C. Bjelich, the chief executive of St. Francis Medical Center in Cape Girardeau, Mo., adds “We felt it was unfair for employees who maintained healthy lifestyles to have to subsidize those who do not…Essentially that’s what happens.”

Of interest is the fact that many of those banning smoking and nicotine testing job applicants are large health organizations and hospitals. It probably won’t surprise you that the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association haven’t been hiring smokers. Hospitals taking up the standard is a little vareniclinerx more unusual, and points to a trend. Organizations like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) are being asked about the issue as well, although it is at the moment not a high priority.

The NYT closes the story with an interesting anecdote – 68 year old John Stinson applied for a job at the Cleveland Clinic, despite their no-smoking/er policy and his old decades old habit. He stayed clean in time for his nicotine urine test …and lo and behold, it wasn’t just a break from a bad habit – it helped him quit smoking.

Still, people are understandably uneasy about the decision of employers to bar smokers. For some it is a question of the right to use a legal product; for others it is the fact that a non-smoker policy falls more heavily on those in service jobs. The 2010 Monitoring the Future survey for example found that non-college bound students smoke at double the rate of college bound students.

What are your thoughts on this trend in business? A good large scale policy, or a violation of people’s rights and privacy? Individual states are grappling with the issue as well, and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if one day this question made its way as many others do to the United States Supreme Court.

Will A Shotgun of Marijuana Show Up On A Drug Test / Screen?

February 10th, 2011   1 Comment

We’ve been getting a lot of questions lately about “shotgun” hits of marijuana.  People want to know if they will show up on a drug test.  The short answer is yes.

A potted pot plant.

A marijuana plant.

First, what are shotgun hits of marijuana?  A shotgun is when you inhale marijuana and then exhale it into someone else’s mouth.  If you are the one taking the second inhale, or in other words the person inhaling from someone else’s mouth, you are the one receiving the shotgun.

So you might wonder, “okay, I didn’t directly take a hit.  Maybe it won’t show up on the test.”  Or, “Maybe it’s like second hand smoke.”  But…

Actually taking a shotgun hit is like taking a very concentrated hit – it’s comparable to taking a bong hit as opposed to smoking a joint.  It’s reviahome very potent and contains a lot of THC.  Second hand smoke is just ambient – the THC dissipates into the air rapidly.  That’s why second hand smoke doesn’t appear on a marijuana drug test.

Regardless of whether you are inhaling from a joint, paraphernalia, or someone else’s mouth, if you are intentionally inhaling marijuana smoke and/or getting high, you are probably going to show up on a urine drug screen for marijuana.

For more reading please check out Does Secondhand Marijuana Smoke Show Up On A Drug Test.  Or check out our marijuana drug test kit product page.  Our test is used by companies all over the USA to screen employees for marijuana use and meets suggested initial testing levels.  For those who wish to test themselves or others, it’s a good choice.

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Couch Potatoes and Heart Disease

January 28th, 2011   1 Comment

A new study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology set out to find if prolonged sitting was linked to cardiovascular diseases.  Actually the doctors called the study “Screen-Based Entertainment Time, All-Cause Mortality, and Cardiovascular Events” where “screen based entertainment” is more commonly known as TV and or computer – leave it to doctors to come up with a title like that.

After following 4,512 Scottish people from 2003 to 2007 and recording their screen viewing time and their health, Emmanuel Stamatakis, PhD, MSc, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, United Kingdom said:

“People who spend excessive amounts of time in front of a screen — primarily watching TV — are more likely to die of any cause and suffer heart-related problems.  Our analysis suggests that two or more hours of screen time each day may place someone at greater risk for a cardiac event.”

The study found that those people who spent two or more hours per day in front of a screen for leisure activities were double the risk of heart attack or other cardiac event compared with those who spent less sedentary time in front of a screen.  Those in the study who had four or more hours of screen time were fifty percent more likely to die of any cause.  One surprising fact in the study was that it did not matter if they were physically active for several other hours in the week in other words exercise in addition to being a couch potato did not improve the heart health of those in this study.

According to Doctor Emmanuel Stamatakis approximately 25% of the association between screen time and cardiovascular disease events was explained collectively by C-reactive protein.  Extended periods of sitting may cause high levels of low-grade inflammation which can lead to heart disease.  A marker of low-grade inflammation called C reactive protein or CRP was about three times higher in the study participants who spent the most time sitting in front of a screen.

While the study covered recreational screen time since that was the easiest for people to have a choice in, Dr. Stamatakis mentioned that people with jobs that require extended sitting and screen time should take breaks and short walks throughout the day.

Spice Still Available? The Legal Challenges Keeping It (Temporarily) Alive

January 28th, 2011   4 Comments

Remember the synthetic marijuana-like product Spice?  Other than Four Loko, Spice was probably the drug story of the year, attracting the attention of media outlets, parents, and kids alike.  In time it attracted the attention of the federal government as well, and the DEA in November said that it would take emergency measures to schedule the drug, or in other words to classify it as they do other drugs, and get it removed from the market.  According to the DEA’s release, the final rule on the psychoactive compounds JWH-018, JWH-073, JWH-200, CP-47,497, and cannabicyclohexanol would be published on December 24th.

The controversial products that people call "fake pot" are still on the market.

The popular brand "K2"

This was very disappointing to Spice smokers.  You might be surprised to learn that as of now the disappointment is unwarranted – though the DEA made its announcement on November 24th, the products remain on the market.

Huh?  As it turns out, the DEA was not clear in its original release as to the timeframe of the temporary ban.  Apparently, 30 days is the minimum amount of time required to announce a change in the rules.  But it doesn’t mean that’s the amount of time it will take – the DEA can take all the time it needs and has issued another release to clarify that.  So, Spice has been pulled from a lot of shelves (or reformulated), and we are told a home drug test is in the works for it, but it’s still, technically, temporarily, legal.

DEA Spokeswoman Barbara Carreno, interviewed by the Hartford Advocate, explained the process, explaining “We still have to write new regulations and publish them and that’s taken longer than expected.”  Furthermore:

While the law stipulates that the DEA must announced its proposed ban thirty days prior to enacting it, there’s nothing that prohibits them from taking longer, Carreno says. Until the rules are actually published in the Federal Register, the nation’s official rule book, the ban will not go into effect.

She said she wouldn’t offer an estimate as to when final rules may be published, saying the agency had “learned our lesson” with regard to predictions or estimated time frames. She said vendors of K2 and Spice should continue checking the register to stay on the right side of the law.

Business owners will have to be vigilant, although it seems likely that when Spice and K2 are actually off the market, the media attention to the issue will resume, at least briefly.

Another reason why the DEA is having trouble getting Spice products off the market is a lawsuit that has been filed in Minnesota by a few business owners.  They argue that banning Spice will hurt their bottom lines, and it surely will, as one business owner said Spice accounted for a million dollars in sales last year (see The Salt Lake Tribune for more info).  The lawsuit was dismissed just days ago by Judge Patrick Schiltz but the business owners are filing a repeal.

Apparently the DEA expects to issue a final ruling on the ban next month.  A seemingly separate group, the Retail Compliance Association, has also made a legal challenge to the ban, based on its impact on small businesses and certain federal acts better explained by David Kroll here.  According to the press release by the Retail Compliance Association

One economic analyst stated that the industry may represent more than 1 billion in economic impact, if true, this will preclude the ban from ever taking effect as the emergency order is governed by Executive Order 12991 which states that emergency bans cannot be implemented in the cases where a 100 million dollar or greater economic impact will be imposed.

It would be interesting to learn more about those numbers and see how the case is argued.  The DEA says it has removed language in its Notice of Intent that cited the acts in question.

The (threatened) Spice ban raises a lot of interesting issues.  It does seem to warrant a ban – it’s basically unregulated, unknown chemicals sprayed on plant material, and it has been causing bad reactions among some people.  Marijuana legalization advocates seem to like Spice because it makes marijuana look good in comparison.  How the DEA will handle synthetic cannabinoids in general (as there are way more than the 5 the DEA specified in their Notice of Intent) will be intriguing as well.

So the Spice saga goes on…we’ll let you know when the DEA publishes its rules in February, if in fact they publish the rules at all.

Picture from “The Pitch”

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Music & Love: Just Like Drugs

January 10th, 2011   4 Comments

As it turns out, you really don’t need drugs to get high – in fact both music and a feeling of love can create reactions in the brain similar to the highs of cocaine. Two separate studies over the past few months have produced interesting insights into our emotional brain.

The older study, from October, involved showing pictures of someone that the subjects described themselves as being passionately in love with (see the study at the Guardian) to the subject while the subject was administered a dose of pain.  The effect of seeing the pictures dulled the pain, and not only that, it did so in a manner similar to morphine and cocaine.  The pictures hit the nucleus accumbens, which the article describes as “key reward addiction centre” and a “region [that] tells the brain that you really need to keep doing this.”  The same study suggests that distractions also work at reducing pain, but they do so differently and in other regions of the brain, regions not associated with opioid drugs.

The most recent study suggests that music has drug-like effects on the brain as well.  This study, conducted by scientists at McGill University, measured increases of the chemical dopamine in the brain while music was played.  It reminds me of reports from the summer of last year (see Wired) about a new phenomenon known as “i-dosing,” in which ambienbuy kids were listening to droning music through headphones to get “high.”  As it turns out, they very well may have been getting high – scientists found that when subjects were listening to music that they said “gave them goosebumps” their dopamine levels rose by 6-9%, with one subject’s dopamine levels rising 21%.  By comparison, cocaine takes dopamine levels up by 22% or more.  A favorite piece was Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings.”

It would be great to see some of these results duplicated in further studies – the study about love was fairly small. Understanding more about how the human brain works and processes stimuli is a great goal – imagine the doors such research could open into better substance abuse treatment techniques, into happier people in general, and so on. Some may wonder if this will lead to some kind of music urine drug test or so on – but I doubt it. Try to think of one bad side-effect that music produces…

The techno version of the song was also popular.

Perhaps listening to “Love is the Drug” by Roxy Music is the one thing that can really tie all these findings together.

Got any other news stories for us to look at? Drop a comment or send us an email!

(Image above is a 3D sound spectrum analysis of a violin string).

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Drug Detecting Dogs: Not So Effective After All?

January 7th, 2011  

Drug sniffing dogs are a popular icon in the War On Drugs, seen walking around airports or riding around in a K-9 squad car.  They reinforce our notion that dogs are man’s best friend.  Whether or not they reliably succeed in the task of detecting drugs is another question.

The Chicago Tribune came out with an analysis yesterday of three years’ worth of data on drug sniffing dogs’ effectiveness.  The news was not great – the dogs were more often wrong than right when they alerted officers to search a car for drugs and/or paraphernalia.  Over 3 years, only 44% of alerts led to a successful finding of drugs/paraphernalia; if the driver in question was Hispanic, the success rate dropped to 27%.  (You will be relieved to know our tests are much more accurate, 98% accurate in fact – see our marijuana drug test for more information).

You may wonder then if this proves to be a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which is in place to protect against unreasonable searches and seizures.  What might surprise you even more is that there is almost no regulation of the process by which the dogs are certified and trained.  Supporters of the drug-sniffing dogs view this as one of the main problems and an important reason for the less than impressive stats.  Other issues include the fact that the dogs may be sniffing residue rather than drugs when they go into false alert mode.

While it’s good that the dogs can sniff out drugs, it’s clear that more training must be done to make sure that they do effectively and without bias.  A complete search of a car done without merit is a waste of time and resources and a source of humiliation for the person subject to it.  Hopefully this story will draw attention to the issue and lead to improvements where needed in dog detection programs.

German Shepherds are often chosen to be drug sniffing dogs in the US.

German Shepherds are often used in K-9 Units

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