Recreational drug testing

A small extract from my soon to be released book

“Urine testing
With the increase in random urine testing for drugs an ever increasing number of clients bring this issue to counseling. Most want to discuss ways to get around the testing, usually how long before testing do they have to stop using and the possibility of masking agents.There have been a lot of possible masking agents put forth by clients over the years. There are many rumors and myths about masking agents.  However as the number of people being urine tested grows it is quite possible that in the future it will become economic to produce and sell reliable masking agents for recreational drugs.”

My prediction may have come true! 

Last week I was supervising someone who works in a drug rehab centre and he was discussing a particular client. This person was disrupting the center and other clients. It was suspected that he was smoking marijuana which of course is a direct trigger for all the others there and quite disruptive to the functioning to the center. He was required to give a urine sample for testing and it came up negative. He was then subsequently given another more involved (and much more expensive) test and it still came up negative. 

It was suspected that he was smoking kronic which is a new synthetically produced marijuana. Eventually he caused a fight with another client, his room was searched and the marijuana found. He admitted to smoking it and was removed from the centre. This confirms what has been suspected for some time that some varieties of kronic do not show up on drug tests. Perhaps this is the start of chemists producing drugs and masking agents which can avoid detection. Maybe this is the first serious and effective venture into masking for recreational drugs.

With kronic the molecular structure can be repeatedly slightly altered such that the effects of the marijuana remain the same but it becomes a different drug. This indeed has caused consternation for legislators as the newly produced varieties of kronic sometimes fall outside the current legislation.

As we have seen with sports people and performing enhancing drugs it becomes a never ending game of “catch me if you can”. The chemists are continually making new masking agents and the drug testers are continually trying to catch up. This is a very expensive exercise but in the arena of professional sport it is big business so the money can be spent.

However with recreational drug use there is no money involved. The ‘prize’ at the end is just getting stoned not a gold medal and then millions of dollars in endorsements. To play catch up with the masking of recreational drugs simply is going to be uneconomic.

Interesting times indeed. It will be interesting to see how society reacts to this new development should it continue. The grapevine in the drug subculture is very effective and one would imagine many already know about kronic and its ability to be undetected in urine tests.

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