If you’ve decided to purchase a home drug test kit, you will need to consider a few things before you make your final decision. The first and likely biggest part of deciding what to choose is sorting out which drugs you’d like to drug test for with your test kit. This is because, while many kits test for marijuana and a few other drugs, there are others that you’ll need to do specific drug tests in your subject’s sample. This means, you’ll also be deciding on the length of time you’d like to cover with the drug test. Remember urine tests can only test for the last 2-3 days before the test is done while a hair follicle drug test can test for the last few months (90 days)
Once you’ve determined the length of time you want the test to cover and the type of drugs you need to test for, you can begin your search. There are a wide variety of home drug test companies that have easy to access and informative websites for you to look over for more info. Make your choices based on what you need and what you feel you can afford. Its best if you can select a company that offers an expedient result (whether through effective home tests you do yourself or through labs that process the sample you mail in) and quality accurate results from their products. Look for testimonials and other things like informative information about the products to help determine if they are offering an effective product.
While there are many advantages to a home drug kit, there are additional advantages to using a lab based version. Here are a few.
Proven Results: When a lab tests the sample you’ve sent in, you can be sure that the results will be accurate. While both versions use an immunoassay drug test, the lab drug test will have carefully calibrated machines that can detect differences that just aren’t available in a regular home drug test kit. Many labs also double check a positive result before returning the results.
Legally Defensible: The specific guidelines that a lab must adhere to when they perform drug testing mean that the drug test results are legally defensible if you require it. A positive result that comes from a lab tested kit can be used to prove drug abuse has happened.
Ability to Personalize the Test: When a lab test is done, the test can be focused on the person’s specific type of suspected use, demographic, weight, age and other factors that can play a part in how these drugs remain in the body. This also means that you can ask for several possible drugs to be tested in the sample.
Less Risk for Mistakes: While many home drug tests kits have comprehensive instructions to help the home drug tester, this still leaves the person doing the kit without the education and care that lab techs have. Lab techs are trained not to make common mistakes that might happen at home and know how they affect the results.
Longer Testing Period: While most urine drug tests can evaluate a sample for no longer than 2 weeks, a hair sample can be tested for as long as 90 days. Additionally, the body only retains remaining traces of drug use for a short span whereas hair follicles retain those traces directly in the hair follicle itself for as long as the hair is on that person’s head.
Less Invasive: A person can easily give a hair sample without the required privacy of urinating and the sample can easily be taken at any time. It is also highly unlikely that a person must be monitored for hair follicle tampering as they would be for urine testing.
Nearly Tamper Proof: Hair follicle testing is immune to many of the cheats available on the market for urine testing. Because the hair follicle retains the traces inside the follicle, it cannot be cleared from the hair with shampoos and bleaches. There is also no way to add things to the sample to adulterate the test results.
Drug Free Periods Don’tGive False Negatives: Despite the period where use didn’t occur, periods of drug use will not be cleared from the hair follicle. Every month, about ½ inch of hair is produced and as long as that hair remains on the body it will be proof of that drug use.
More Specific Drug Results: While many other forms of drug testing cannot differentiate between drug types such as opiates and poppy seeds, hair testing can.
Home drug test kits offer the user several benefits. Here a few of the bigger advantages of home drug test kits.
They are inexpensive compared to the cost of lab testing: While the total cost depends on a variety of factors, lab tests are certainly more expensive than home tests and if money is a consideration this one way to save funds.
Home tests are just as effective as lab tests: Many advances have been made with home drug testing kits and they are now as effective as their lab counterparts. As long as you can follow the instructions you can easily do the test without mistakes.
Results from Home Tests are virtually instant: While lab drug testing often requires at least a few days wait for official results (this is because of testing time and the time spent in shipping), home tests offer results within the hour of when the sample was used.
They are Private: While lab tests require you to ship out a sample and wait for it through the mail as well as sharing the results with lab techs, a home testing kit allows you to handle the issue in your own home.
Convenient: A home drug test kit can be used anywhere at any time. This means that if you wanted to bring one along on a trip it could easily be brought along and completed while you are away.
Prevention: By using a home drug test kit you also give you loved one an opportunity to say no to using because they know the test could come back positive.
Tried and True Method: There are years worth of experience behind urine drug testing as it has been the standard for of testing in schools, homes, jails, and workplaces for many years. For this reason, urine based testing is proven to be accurate and well understood.
Reduced Costs: Urine based testing remains less expensive than that of many other types of drug testing testing. In addition, urine tests have consistently proven to be accurate, which also has a significant impact on the total expense.
Fast Results: Urine tests are virtually instant, meaning that there is a far less time spent in evaluation than many other tests which may require lab testing to be proven accurate.
Easy to Store and Long Shelf Life: Unlike other drug tests, urine tests can be put aside for a time without any likelihood of deterioration or damage from the length of storage.
Detects As Many as 12 Drugs at a Time: Urine testing allows the test person to evaluate the sample for as many as 12 different drugs from the same sample. This isn’t always the case with other forms of testing which may only be able to test for a few different types.
Minimally Invasive: Urine testing allows the subject to collect the sample themselves and then offer it for testing rather than it being collected directly from their body.
FDA Approved: The FDA has declared urine drug testing a safe and accurate form of drug testing for use in all locations where it is legal to conduct testing.