The Benefits of Hair Drug Tests

Hair follicle drug testing is a new alternative to urine testing which is more reliable is easier to conduct. Unlike urine drug testing where the collection of the sample requires privacy and thus promotes a multitude of evasion methods. Hair follicle drug testing is much more reliable since it goes back up to 90 days depending on the test and the type of test conducted.

The only sample required is the hair of the subject which is analyzed to detect evidence of drug abuse. As usual with any abuse detection test in the market, there are products which are purportedly capable of cheating the hair follicle drug testing process and returning a clean result. The more prominent among these that are doing brisk business over the internet is the so-called cleansing shampoos. They only succeed in cleaning the exterior of the hair and leave the inside with trace amounts of illegal drugs as evidence.

In contrast, there are masking agents available to cheat the urine drug tests that are in wide use right now. Just the fact that in most cases the urine samples are collected in privacy enables the subject to provide a falsified or tampered sample for the test. Hair follicle drug testing is better on this front because the person in charge of the test can personally collect a sample and ensure that there will be no tampering of the sample.

Conducting a hair follicle drug test is child’s play with all those do-it-yourself test kits available in the market today. All you have to do is order a test over the internet and once the kit arrives, just follow the instructions on it accurately. Hair follicle drug testing works on the principle that when a drug is injected (or otherwise infused) into the bloodstream which nourishes the growing hair follicles, a marginal but traceable amount of the drug is left on the hair follicle. Even after the hair follicle grows out, a trace amount of the drug is still left there which could be detected in the laboratory.

A half inch of hair sample could resolve into a 30-day history of drug abuse after being subjected to hair follicle drug testing. If the sample as 1.5 inches long, the rule of thumb dictates that up to 90 days of drug abuse history can be ascertained. People who are contemplating shaving their heads to evade the test could use the fact that body hair could also be used to test for drugs. The result of the tests is not affected by the use of bleaches or shampoos of any kind. It would be comforting to know that second-hand smoke of weed is not detected in hair follicle drug testing. There goes another good explanation of guilt.

Hair follicle drug testing is a precise and sophisticated process, the low point being that it is also a slow process. A proper hair follicle test could take as long as 3 months before the results are returned. This obstinate delay in the availability of the result puts many people off, but the accuracy of the results and the general reliability of the method is an advantage that surely overrides any drawbacks of this process.

Another possible drawback of hair follicle drug testing that has received some limelight in the recent years is that different ethnic groups have different hair structures which are not taken into consideration in the tests. This could lead to false positives being recorded in the results. Nobody wants to be erroneously marked a drug abuser simply because he was the only Asian in the group, right? Rhetoric apart, the prospect of a false positive is appalling, to say the least. The amount of research that goes into these drug tests and the technology involved would invariably increase their reliability further.

The amusing fact is that no matter whether you chose to agree with the credibility of hair follicle drug testing or not, this testing methodology is gaining wide opinion and devout followers. The future would see the elimination of urine drug tests in favor of this test for sure. The odds weigh in favor of the hair follicle drug tests, and for obvious reasons.