The Home Drug Test Kits

How do you prevent a child from becoming a drug addict and ruining his or her life as well as those of the family?  Is the answer a home drug test?  No.  The answer is open, honest and intelligent communication. In  other words, parents need to communicate with their children about drugs.

Experts advise an open and ongoing dialog consisting of multiple discussions about drug abuse and its harmful effects on your children. Note that dialog refers to input and feedback from both parents and children.  Which means parents need to “bone up” on drug information.  Particularly facts regarding how drugs can interfere with a child’s school work, health and sports and how getting into legal trouble with drugs can effect their future. Note that communication needs to start at an early age and more and more information needs to be discussed as child gets older.  Also remember that you need to confront with facts, not judgments.  Healthy communication referring to dialog between children and parents has been proven to be a deterrent to drug abuse.

Communication is vital because adolescents are vulnerable to drug addiction for many reasons.  Scientists believe that because impulse control is not mature, children will take a drug if offered t them.  They are willing to try any “high” available and believe there will be no consequences. Often a teen has an attitude of “it wont’ happen to me”.  Talk to your teen about the consequences of using drugs.  Cite real world examples of  people in the neighborhood, school or community.  Set clear rules, consequences and expectations with your child.  Don’t be afraid to consider a home drug test program implementation if you feel it’s necessary.

It is very likely that your children will be pressured by friends and or acquaintances to try drugs or alcohol.  Teens who feel pressured into using drugs have an legitimate “out” if parents randomly home drug test.   This  can make it much easier for your child to reject drug offerings from friends and peers.

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Vicodin is a derivative of opium, which also used to manufacture heroin. It is the most widely known brand name for a combination of hydrocodone and acetaminophen. Some of its generic equivalents include brand names Lorcet, Lortab, Norco, Panacet and Zydone.

Vicodin Prescription:

Vicodin is one of the most widely prescribed opiate medications for treatment of moderate to severe pain in injury, illness, surgery or a chronic condition across the globe. Overall, it has been reported as an effective, well tolerated opioid for analgesic purposes. It is quite inexpensive, with a mild side effects profile. It is one of the most favored prescribed pain relievers as allergic reactions are highly unlikely with Vicodin.

Vicodin Abuse:

It is estimated that in 1999, 4 million people were using prescription drugs non-medically and out of these 4 million, 2.6 million misused pain relievers the most common of which is Vicodin. In 2000, the National Institute on Drug Abuse listed Vicodin as an emerging recreational drug. Its use has risen steadily each year, and has now achieved the status of no longer being emerging. Vicodin has become one of the most commonly abused prescription medications. In 2006, USA Today reported that more emergency room visits are made by Vicodin and other prescription drugs abusers than by all other illicit drug abusers combined.

Effects of Vicodin Abuse:

Some of the common side effects of Vicodin abuse include confusion, nausea, vomiting, lightheadedness, dizziness, drowsiness, redness of the face, and temporary changes in vision or mood, along with infrequent constipation. These effects can be subdued by drinking a lot of water and consuming fiber rich foods on daily basis.

Over a period of time, effects of Vicodin abuse become more serious and more damaging. There may be cardiac arrhythmia leading to speeding up or slowing down of the heart rate. As Vicodin use grows, its effects can be characterized by blurred vision, hallucinations, and severe confusion.

Vicodin may interact with many other drugs if taken in conjunction, like, various sedatives, tranquilizers, antidepressants, other analgesics, antihistamines, anti-anxiety & anti-spasmodic drugs to name a few. Because of this high potential for drug interactions, it is highly recommended to avoid alcohol, which can increase drowsiness and dizziness, and may cause damage to the liver, and other medications containing acetaminophen.

As with other Opiate drugs, Vicodin withdrawal symptoms include restlessness, muscle pain, bone pain, insomnia, diarrhea, vomiting, cold flashes, goose bumps, involuntary leg movements, watery eyes, runny nose, loss of appetite, irritability, panic, nausea, chills & sweating to name a few.

Vicodin Testing:

When consumed, some amount of Vicodin remains unchanged in the body while rest of it is metabolized to different secondary products called metabolites. A diverse array of techniques is available nowadays to detect these unchanged Vicodin or Vicodin metabolites, such as:

•Blood sampling for Vicodin/metabolite testing

•Urine based Vicodin/metabolite testing

•Hair follicle based Vicodin/metabolite detection

•GC/MS based Vicodin/metabolite detection

•Vicodin/metabolite-specific antibody based diagnostic kits

GC/MS or Antibody based screening can be done on any of the blood, urine or hair follicle samples. Some companies have also come out with rapid screening kits for home use which can be used without any previous expertise.

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Think  purchasing a home drug test kit to detect narcotic use for your teen is unnecessary?  This might change your mind.  Prescription drugs for teens are the new high.   In a study at the University of Wisconsin, 1 out of  5 students have tried illicit prescription drugs.  Most often  these drugs are viewed as legal and harmless.   After all,  doctors prescribe them, people take them and our parents purchased them legally.  What is the harm?   The harm is this, many teens abuse pills because often these pills are easily accessible and free, that is, they reside  in their parent’s medicine cabinet.  They assume pills cannot hurt them.  Pills, after all, are prescribed by a doctor and are safely used to make a person better.   However, there is danger.  Teens who abuse prescription drugs often do it when they have been drinking  and/or using other drugs.  They also may chew the pill instead of swallowing whole, or they may crush the pill, there by getting a quicker more potent “high” or they may dilute the pills in water and inject it.    Teens also can become more easily addicted to drugs than adults.  Drug addiction is lifelong.  A home drug test can determine if your child is using pain killers.

Most often teens will abuse pain killers, drugs such as Oxycodone that are in the opiate class.   Drugs such as oxycodone are very powerful and in the same class as heroin, morphine and codeine.

Signs your child is abusing oxycontin or similar drugs are the following:

• Small pupils
• Tiredness
• Dizziness
• Slow Breathing
• Nausea
• Clammy Skin
• Cold Skin

Be aware that some of these same signs are also associated with alcohol use.   The good news is that you can now test your teen at home, if you suspect any drug  abuse or simply want your child to have a strong detterant to doing drugs.  A  home drug  test can detect use of oxycontin and related drugs.  Home drug testing kits are  also quick, accurate and are done in the privacy of your own home.

The Problem of Prescription Oxycodone Abuse

As you may know, prescription drug abuse has developed into a huge problem in the United States. For example, a 2005 Monitoring the Future survey of high school students showed that OxyContin abuse went up among 12th graders by 40 percent in 3 years. OxyContin is one of the many generic names for drugs that include the narcotic oxycodone.

When used as prescribed, drugs like OxyContin and Percocet (which also contains oxycodone) provide much needed pain relief to cancer patients and people recovering from surgery. When incorrectly used however, OxyContin earns its nickname “hillbilly heroin” by producing heroin-like highs in the user and doing so in many cases more cheaply than heroin itself. This is why the Oxycodone, or OxyContin Test, developed – in response to a growing problem that needed a solution.

Before the OxyContin Test was made, there was no 98% accurate way for a urine drug test buyer to test for oxycodone based drugs, even though they do have much in common with opium and heroin, drugs which can all be tested for at once.

The Difference Between Opiates and Opioids

To understand why oxycodone needs its own home drug test, first we must examine how the drugs of concern here are classified. They are all opioids. Opioids are chemicals that work on the brain’s opioid receptors. Endorphins, for example, are opioids produced naturally by the body. Morphine, opium, heroin, oxycodone, and hydrocodone (Vicodin) are all opioids too. They are so similar, but they cannot all be detected by the same drug screen. Why?

FDA cleared urine drug tests for Opiates that are on the market are made to detect specifically morphine or specifically heroin. An Opiates test that has a 300 nanogram per milliliter cutoff level is one that is looking for morphine-based drugs, while an Opiates test that has a 2000 nanogram per milliliter cutoff level is looking for heroin and opium. Morphine does have a lot in common with oxycodone, as they are both opioids, but morphine can be found naturally, whereas oxycodone cannot. Oxycodone must be made in a lab. This leads to some structural differences.

While a urine drug test for Opiates can pick up morphine, heroin, and so on, depending on the cut-off level, it can only detect oxycodone/OxyContin in great quantities – overdose levels. So a new design was called for to deal with the prescription drug abuse problem.

The OxyContin / Vicodin Test

The same technology used to create other urine drug tests was used to make the oxycodone test. It can pick up OxyContin, Vicodin (made of acetaminophen and hydrocodone, a drug very similar to oxycodone), Percocet and other hydrocodone, hydromorphone, or oxycodone-based drugs with 98% accuracy. This is a much greater accuracy for these drugs than was available with either of the two versions of the opiates urine drug test. Depending on metabolism and other factors, oxycodone appears in urine 2-5 hours after it is used and disappears from urine 2-4 days later. The new oxycodone specific drug tests can find oxycodone in urine at the level of 100 nanograms per milliliter, a very small amount.

Making the Right Choices as a Consumer of a Home Drug Test

Whether you are a member of a police department, a worried parent or a friend, it is important to have the right information in hand when making a decision about how to deal with drug abuse. If you suspect drug abuse and want to test for it, make sure you choose a test that targets the drug at hand. You might think that an opiates drug test could detect oxycodone, since opiates in general and oxycodone are very similar. This is not the case when it comes to the home drug test options though and a careful shopper will have the most success in finding oxycodone.

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by Dr. Deb Carlin

If you’re not trained to recognize the signs of drug use or symptoms of drug use in your teen and are considering the idea of using home drug test kits to keep bad things from happening to them, then you wouldn’t be the first parent to question the accuracy of home drug tests. Accuracy is critical and questioning it is a responsible thing to do.

Some home drug test kits are more accurate than others, and there are certainly some variables associated with different collection methods such as urine, saliva and hair. However, the short answer is that the accuracy of these tests are comparable to lab results. If it wasn’t, then we wouldn’t be seeing doctors, hospitals and medical clinics all across the country using the exact same testing kits with their patients.

Additionally, you always have the option and are encouraged to verify any disputed results using a GCMS confirmation test from an accredited lab. Most of the time, if your teen has been using illegal drugs and the home drug test kit shows it, they will admit it. If not, confirmation testing is always an option.

If you want to know more about using home drug tests or picking out the best home drug test kit for your teen, or the steps to starting a home drug testing program, then there are plenty of helpful resources on the Internet. Program checklists, counselor approved strategies and video tutorials are must-see resources that are available to help you.

Copyright 2010 Test My Teen LLC.

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Home Drug Test Kits: Since the beginning of time, good kids have been known to do dumb things. The same can be said of naïve and well-meaning parents. Because they don’t know what to say, some parents fail to talk to their children about drugs. Others develop a false sense of security after they do.

It’s much more comfortable for parents to hold the belief that things haven’t changed much since they were young than it is to accept the fact that they have. It’s also much easier for parents to believe that their teenagers always tell them the truth and would never try drugs, but who ever said parenting was supposed to be easy?

Parents ask me when they should talk to their kids, what they should say, and what they can do to follow through. Ben Franklin said, “Wise is the man who fixes his roof before it rains.” I couldn’t agree more. I suggest that parents would be well served to sit down with their children and start talking about a home drug testing program as early as middle school.

To protect privacy, home drug testing kits can be ordered on the Internet and shipped in nondescriptive packaging. The accuracy of the most popular test kits is comparable to labs and medical clinics at a fraction of the price. Results usually appear within minutes and are easy to read by the average parent in the convenience of their own home.

If the idea of drug testing your teens sounds unreasonable, consider how much times have changed. If someone told me when I was in high school by the time my son attended middle school, that police officers (now affectionately referred to as school resource officers) and dogs trained to detect drugs would patrol school hallways, I would have never believed it. Metal detectors and school shootings aren’t nightmares: they have become a reality.

A successful program will have several key components. The first component is comprised of parents willing to place a higher priority on acting as a parent than as their teenager’s best friend. I find it hypocritical that parents who are quick to assert that it’s more important for their kids do the right thing than it is to do what’s popular are reluctant to start a home drug testing program because the newfound accountability might not be popular with their kids.

The second component is the introductory conversation in which parents acknowledge that their kids are growing up and are deserving of additional freedom. However, additional responsibility and accountability should come with expanded freedom.

Dr. Michael Reznicek, a medical doctor with emergency room experience, actually developed a software program that facilitates the initial parent-child conversation and eliminates potential misunderstandings by creating a contract that spells out specific rewards and consequences tied to home drug test results. The software also becomes the preferred target of potential animosity over requests for hair, urine, or saliva samples for drug testing purposes because it also selects random testing dates.

From the time children are very young, they’re taught to “just say no” to drugs, and I’m convinced that the peer pressure usually gets worse when they do. Teens don’t know what to say next. Parents who follow through with a home drug testing program give their teens a socially acceptable excuse. The words “My parents test me” stop pushy peers in their tracks.

The final component of a successful program is effective parental follow-through. Teens want their parents to trust them. If they think their parents are naïve and/or won’t test them, they are more likely to try drugs because they don’t expect to get caught. While teens place a high value on maintaining their parents’ trust, they just don’t feel it is in jeopardy without testing. Teens’ behavior and choices change when they know that it is a near certainty rather than a virtual impossibility that their drug use will be discovered.

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Some people view the creation and use of home drug test kits as radical.  But once you know the facts, you’ll think otherwise. Today’s teens are exposed to a plethora of easily accessible drugs.   A national survey sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) yielded some shocking results.   On an average day in the United States,  641,000 use illicit drugs.  Why is this so disturbing?  At a time when a teen should be building a healthy character and identity, discovering and attaining a career, they can waste years of their lives in addiction.

Getting Back Your Control

As parents, you are legally and financially responsible for the behavior of your children.  You have every right to know and get all the facts that you can in regards to your child’s possible drug use. So if you suspect your child is using drugs there is something you can do to stop and prevent further use.   One of the most important and cost-effective ways to prevent and stop drug abuse in children is to use home drug test kits.  Home drug testing kits provides precise, dependable, and rapid results by identifying the existence of drugs in urine or saliva samples.

What Drugs Are Screened?

Home drug test kits typically are panel  (group) tests that screen for the following:

THC – marijuana, weed, smoke, pot, hash Cocaine  - crack, skitz, snow

Methamphetamines – ice, crank, crystal, glass

Opiates -heroin, horse, vicodin, morphine, codeine

Amphetamines -speed, uppers, go

Benzodiazepines -t-bars, roofies, date rape drug, valium, librium, xanax

Peace of Mind

Children will avoid taking drugs if they know that their parents will be testing them for drugs at home.  They also have a good excuse to “opt out” of using drugs in peer pressure situations.  Parents can also breathe easier knowing they can use home drug test kits to ensure children are not using drugs when they are away from home.

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