Sunday 21 June 2009

Drug test result "mix up" in Malaysia

posted in - General, - Palmdoc |

Recently a patient of mine was held in a police lock-up for alleged ingestion of illicit drugs. He happened to be at a pub at the wrong time when he as “picked up” and his urine test for opiates and THC (cannabis/marijuana) was allegedly positive. Well he happened to be taking DF118 at that time (a codeine analgesic) so we could write a medical report stating that the DF118 was responsible for the false positive opiate drug test. We could not explain the THC positive result and the police sergeant kept pressing the patient and the family on this issue. A bit of Googling (as an aside, I Googled using the mobile version, direct from my Treo 680, as I happened to be having lunch in a coffee shop when the call for help came in) showed up this page:
Medications & Substances Causing False Positives
Apparently even NSAIDs like ibuprofen (which can be bought over the counter) can cause a THC false positive test so I advised the family to double check carefully what other medicines he has been recently taking. The story had a happy ending though as the police cocked up and there was a “mix-up” in the urine sample. The unfortunate young man spent two days in a police lock-up although he was completely innocent!
I don’t know how much our police farce force are aware of the wide scope of false positive results in urine drug testing. I doubt they will even be convinced that there are legitimate medical uses of marijuana!

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