Cansford Labs - The Drug and Alcohol Testing Blog

Every drug and alcohol test that Cansford Labs conducts will result in a report that explains the results. Substance levels are shown as numbers, and we'll also include our interpretation of what it all means - based on the results and the information given to us by the client.

We can say with some confidence whether a person has used cocaine in the past month, and if the lawyer tells us they’ve said they attended parties in that time, we can build up a likely picture. What we can’t say, is exactly how much cocaine they used. X levels of drugs in the system does not immediately equate to a specific number - there are too many variables to be so precise.

Substance abuse is a perpetual problem that continues to linger in many businesses. Aside from high-risk industries, however, UK law puts the onus on firms to devise and develop their own drug and alcohol policies.

It’s telling, then, that only 21% of UK employers currently have a strict drug and alcohol policy in place. One problem could well be that businesses don’t know where to start. Developing a robust and legally defensible drug and alcohol policy that not only satisfies the company’s legal and insurance requirements but also takes into account employee health and well-being is not easy.

Some years ago, Cansford worked on a social services case where a woman was required to demonstrate that she was free from amphetamines before the courts would release her child back into her care.

For around a year, regular saliva tests on pre-arranged dates consistently came back negative, with social services reaching the point where they were ready to sign her off. A subsequent hair test, however, showed continued usage of amphetamines for months.

In the US, the number of drug-related deaths is doubling every nine years, with over 72,000 of the country’s citizens dying as a result of a drug overdose in 2017. While a variety of illicit substances add to these sorry statistics, it’s synthetic opioids - including fentanyl - that are responsible for the highest number of fatalities.

Fentanyl alone was responsible for over 29,000 of those 72,000 deaths: contributing so greatly to the country’s opioid crisis that the US justice department and DEA have proposed to cut fentanyl production quotas for 2019.

Drug testing is still far from commonplace in UK workplaces.

However, in a culture where 31% of the population have taken illegal drugs (with 21% admitting to continuing to take them either regularly or on occasion), the sands are slowly shifting. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) view is that there is no need for widespread workplace drug testing, but for how long?