For a long time, urine drug testing has been the standard method of evaluating a person’s drug use in places of employment, sports, play and schools. However, despite all its advantages, urine drug testing still falls short when compared to other more advanced techniques. Hair follicle drug testing is one such technique, which, while still a little more expensive than a standard urine drug test, is a far more accurate and longer spanning form of drug testing.
Here are some of the advantages of hair follicle drug testing over urine drug testing:
- While urine testing can generally only test for a window of about 2-3 days, hair follicle drug testing can detect drugs taken within 90 days. Some specialty hair testing techniques are even capable of detecting drugs taken within 6 months.
- Hair follicle drug testing is far more sensitive and the results are not affected by short periods of abstinence from the drugs. This is because the hair follicle stores the drug history (via certain trace chemicals) in the cells of the hair itself. This technique can also be used to determine patterns of drug usage.
- Hair follicle drug testing can be used to reliably distinguish between poppy seed and opiate use. It can also be used to easily identify a wide array of drugs including but not limited to Cocaine, Cannabis, Opiates, Barbiturates and Ecstasy.
- Hair follicle drug testing is relatively un-intrusive as compared to urine testing.
The only drawback in hair follicle drug testing is its higher working cost. However, the advantages far outweigh the cost factor , making this the preferred method of drug testing in doping tests and forensic studies.