Posted by Racer on September 8, 2004, at 12:00:51
In reply to Urgent info needed today!!!!!!!!!!!!!, posted by woolav on September 8, 2004, at 11:42:04
The complete answer is that they can test for pretty much anything they have a mind to test for. That means that, if the lab chooses to test for, say, benzos, they can.
Here's where the $$ come in, though. The more drugs the company asks to have tested for, the more they have to spend. Since the company doesn't want to spend money unnecessarily, they're very unlikely to do more than screen for the Usual Suspects: opiates, THC, cocaine -- the illegal drugs. They have no incentive to test for any legal drugs -- especially since they can be dinged for it if they do, as a violation of your civil liberties, if nothing else. There's also the ADA stuff, since depression is considered one of those protected disorders.
Even if the prescriptions you take might skew the results somewhat, the lab would run additional, more sensitive tests for the specific drug(s) they were testing for. Then they'd say, "Oh, false positive" and leave it at that. The labs are For-Profit, so they're not going to waste their resources testing for drugs that they're not being paid to test for. If they do test for something weird, for any reason, they can also be dinged for invasion of privacy.
The bottom line is that, if the test is ordered by anything like a respectable company, your prescription drugs are not going to be reported. You can stop worrying about it.
poster:Racer
thread:388017
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040904/msgs/388027.html