Curious about how drugs actually work in your brain, and the effect they might have on you? This link to the University of Utah’s Genetic Science Learning Center Mouse Party is an extremely fun and surprisingly in-depth distraction/learning experience.
Just like you and me, mice should stick to peanuts, not drugs.
Click the link and you will see a few adorable and very well-rendered animated mice in a cage. They are all exhibiting symptoms of the drug they are abusing. Select any one of the mice and put it in a virtual chair, at which point it will be transported to a machine where its brains will be analyzed. Sounds creepy, but don’t worry, the mouse will be allright!
A narrator explains how the drug affects the brain step by step, and helpfully, phenhome text is also provided. There is a lot to learn! For example, did you know that cocaine is active not just in the reward pathway section of your brain, but also the part that controls voluntary movements? That’s why someone under the influence of cocaine may be extremely fidgety. And did you know our bodies have natural opiates and cannabinoids that act in our brains?
The drugs you can learn about are heroin, ecstasy, marijuana, alcohol, LSD, and cocaine. It’s without a doubt one of the most clever ways I’ve found to teach people about drugs and how they work. We highly recommend you check it out! All the drugs covered in the interactive animation (with the exception of LSD) you can home drug test for by purchasing a test from us.
It is a question we get often – does drug testing work? Is it accurate? The answer to both of those questions is easy, fortunately – yes, and yes! But wondering if drug testing works is also a social question – does drug testing really change behavior? Does it have a purpose? After all, if you are say a school administrator running a mandatory student drug testing program, the most frequent result will be “Negative.”
Drug Tests - Give Your Kid Something To Talk About On The School Bus
One answer to the question that matters is found in a recent Glendale News Press report on students and drug testing. The article covers the drug testing programs of local high schools. Of note is a survey conducted by San Clemente High School in 2006. San Clemente has a voluntary drug testing program. The survey found that “33% of students enrolled in the program used the testing as a reason to say no to drugs” and “23% of teens not enrolled also used it as a reason to say no to drugs.”
These numbers are a testament to the positive effect drug testing can have, in schools and in the home. Not only can you discover use and take steps to deal with the problem, but you can also give your teenager a reason not to try drugs, one that will fly when they are talking to their friends.
You can check out our home drug test selection by clicking the link.
There are many people who ask the question “how long does marijuana stay in your system?” Unfortunately, the answer to this question is not simple and straightforward, the fact is that if you want to use a drug test effectively, it is a question that requires an answer.
So let’s cut through the misinformation on the Internet and provide one!
Before we understand the period of time that marijuana lasts in the system, there are a couple of facts that you should know.
– The presence of marijuana is detected by a drug test through the presence of the active chemical THC or Tetrahydrocannabinol. Technically, what is detected is known as THC-COOH (11-nor-delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol-9-carboxylic acid).
– The time that marijuana stays in the system depends on the amount of marijuana intake and the frequency at which it is consumed.
– When you smoke marijuana, your body breaks it down like it would anything else. The products of this breakdown are known as metabolites. The main metabolite of marijuana is THC-COOH. THC-COOH can be stored in the body in fat if you’ve consumed more than your body can get rid of at a given time.
– If you consume marijuana continuously, your system will be sort of “overloaded” with THC-COOH (which is not to say that you’ll be continuously high). Some of that THC-COOH will be stored away in the fat since the body can’t get rid of it. This means that the THC-COOH will be present in the system for much longer, as the body will have to play catch up at getting rid of the THC-COOH. Think of it as the difference between eating a peanut butter sandwich and a KFC Double-down. Both count as one meal, but one has far more calories and fat content. Since the body can’t use the calories and fat content it’ll store them away. Same with THC-COOH and someone who smokes a lot of marijuana.
– Marijuana drug testing can be conducted using saliva, urine, hair and sometimes blood as the sample.
– The specific window that you need to check for marijuana consumption depends on whether you are checking on someone who has tried for the first time or if you are testing someone who smokes a few times a week, or someone who smokes daily.
How Long Does Marijuana Stay in Saliva?
Marijuana does not stay in saliva for very long. Most of the rules that apply to marijuana’s detection time in urine and hair do not apply to marijuana in saliva. It can be detected by a saliva drug screen about an hour after intake. The accuracy of a saliva drug test (97%-98%) will decrease rapidly about 12 hours after the marijuana was consumed. So while a saliva drug test option may be useful if you want to find out if someone is high or if they were smoking yesterday, it is not an effective test for long term or less recent use.
How often someone smokes marijuana (for example, every day for 6 months, or just once) has no bearing on the results of a saliva drug test.
How Long Does Marijuana Stay In Urine?
The amount of time marijuana can be detected in urine depends on the amount and frequency of its consumption. Marijuana can stay in the urine for up to two months in cases of very frequent, prolonged use. Basically, the more you use marijuana, the longer it will remain in your urine. If you have just tried marijuana, for example, and that was your only use, it will probably be out of your urine within a week.
Those who kick the habit after consuming the drug almost daily can still have THC traces in the urine for a month or longer.
Be sure when testing to wait for about 2 to 5 hours after consumption or last suspected conception for THC to appear in the urine though.
How Long Does Marijuana Stay In Hair?
When smoked, marijuana enters the bloodstream and as the blood nourishes the hair, the drug gets into the hair follicles too. As the hair grows, the hair follicles contain traces of THC that can confirm the intake of marijuana. THC can show up in hair about a week after consumption (it takes the hair bearing traces of THC that long to emerge from the scalp).
Drugs take a long time to deteriorate in the hair and therefore testing can be done many days after consumption. A standard laboratory will check up to 90 days but a court or another law enforcing institution can have hair analyzed for more than 3 months as well. Special arrangements can usually be made with laboratories if inquiries are made.
While hair drug testing provides a good opportunity to confirm whether someone has been on marijuana, and has the largest detection window, the issue is that this drug is not one of the easiest drugs to hair test. THC, when it’s in your body, does not always bind successfully to the hair follicle. Therefore, it is possible that a semi-frequent user may get a negative reading on a hair follicle drug test while someone who had it just once a couple of weeks back may get a positive result. It is a bit of a toss up. The hair follicle drug test is therefore not considered to be as reliable for marijuana as it is for other drugs like cocaine (and for drugs like cocaine, and all other drugs tested for in a standard consumer hair drug test, hair follicle drug testing is actually found to be better at catching drug use than urine tests).
So while the question “how long does marijuana stay in your system” is a pertinent and popular one, there are all of the above factors to consider before an appropriate and correct answer can be given. Even though there is all this discussion about the whole question, if you are concerned, the best thing to do is to just go out there and purchase a home drug test and check out whether you or someone else test clean or not.
(Check out our home drug test product line here! We carry all of the tests profiled above in the chart.)
Remember Ricky Williams? The former college football superstar has spent much of his pro-career dealing with the consequences of failed drug tests, which by his own admission were partially responsible for his brief early retirement and have caused controversy throughout his career. With a lot of his past behind him, Williams is successful again playing for the Miami Dolphins. As NFL coaches and scouts are finding though, his drug use (marijuana) is by no means limited to him or other players.
As Don Banks covers over at Sports Illustrated’s website (SI.com), some head coaches are now describing marijuana use among potential draft picks as an “epidemic.” Beyond the legality of smoking marijuana, possible drug use is a huge issue for teams in the NFL. Do you pass on a superstar like Percy Harvin because of a failed marijuana drug test? And if you don’t, how do you deal with the controversy, bad press, fines, suspensions and possible jail sentence that comes with an athlete that fails a drug test?
Coaches seem to be investigating drug issues player by player, especially if the drug in question is marijuana – harder drugs do not receive such a level of tolerance. Imagine if you are on the verge of a possible contract in the millions with a professional football team – and this is what you must worry about. It’s a pretty scary thought. Ricky Williams is a pretty great football player, but his journey to playing in the NFL on Sundays again was a lot harder than it had to be.
Republican lawmakers in Kansas have come up with a proposal to screen welfare recipients for drug use. There are a few proposals on the table, and they are not exactly new. The Kansas House of Representatives passed a similar bill last year but the Senate of the state did not. The lawmakers in charge of reviving such proposals are in the Senate.
One proposal would require drug testing all welfare recipients – around 44,000 people. Another bill suggests people would only be tested if there was “reasonable cause” to believe they were using drugs.
It is perhaps a controversial issue, and the Springfield News Leader presents various perspectives in their article. Do you agree that it would help people get jobs? Is it an effective way of improving the quality of life among those on welfare?
A home drug test, administered by yourself or someone close to you, can be an effective way of ending drug abuse. But is what is done at home necessarily appropriate on a federal scale?
There are lots of questions about drug testing, but no question that when used correctly it can even save lives – in situations like catching someone who has stumbled back into addiction with a hair drug test, or finding that someone is high on the job with a saliva drug test. And these are just a few examples.
Everyone knows that smoking is extremely harmful for one’s health and the government has done a lot to create awareness of the various problems that smoking can cause. The issue is not with creating awareness about the negative effects of smoking but actually quitting. The New Year is an excellent time to see how this is true because there are thousands of smokers who resolve to quit smoking only to find that they are itching to hold a cigarette in their hands after a few hours of the resolution. A nicotine test, among other methods, is a great way to give up the habit for good.
If you try and ask advice of smokers who have successfully quit smoking for good, you shall find that there are as many suggestions as smokers. While you can review each one of these methods, you will have to check out the one that works best for you. Make sure that you continuously use tobacco testing at home so that you can be aware of the presence of nicotine in your body. Awareness of the pervasiveness of nicotine in your body with these nicotine tests may actually shake you out of your inertia.
Such testing can be done at home very easily. All that you need is a small sample of urine. The tobacco test checks out the level of cotinine in the urine. This is a by-product of nicotine that is processed in your body and excreted through the urine. This is why the nicotine test is also called the cotinine test at times.
Some of the methods that you can adopt to quit smoking have been listed below. These can be used as standalone options or in combination to ensure that you are able to successfully quit the habit. While you work with these methods, use the tobacco test as well.
– Just quit – Some people believe that a slow reduction in the number of cigarettes is not an option but that a cold turkey method should be adopted.
– Reduction over time – This is a method that can help if you have specific times when you reach out for a cigarette and want to slowly eliminate those rituals as days pass. Use a nicotine test when you finally have not smoked for a few days. This can be a great motivator because you can see how your body is actually getting cleansed – you will see after 2 to 4 days that you actually test negative for nicotine!
– Quit with a friend – This is another method that works because it creates a sense of competition and/or cooperation.
There are other methods like nicotine patches, nicotine chewing gums, nicotine lozenges and nicotine inhalers that you can use. Whichever choice you make, everyone wishes you the best of luck in quitting smoking! As a company that specializes in the home drug test, we know of a lot of drugs out there, and nicotine certainly is hard to quit! That’s why we have a test designed along those lines to help you with that legal but addictive substance.
