False Positives In Drug Testing

- August 28, 2010, 9:13 am

False positives in drug testing are an Achilles heel for accuracy in determining user guilt or innocence. Errors in drug testing can exist for anyone of any testing age, race, sex, or blood type, and studies have shown an error rate due to this phenomenon of between 1 and 5%, even with multiple types of drug testing kits. False positive results are especially prevalent in the case of amphetamines, which alone have literally dozens of legal, over-the-counter substances (mostly cold and flu medications) that routinely indicate the drug. Substances as benign as migraine medications, poppy seeds, tonic water, Excedrin and Amoxicillin can falsely indicate LSD, cocaine, opiates and marijuana. But the largest factor in false positives is from faulty, non FDA approved, cheap urine drug