It's easy to fool city's drug tests

By Patrick Boyle
© The Washington Times
Aug. 23, 1989

The District's system for detecting drug use among people on probation is so easy to fool that a city clinic accepted apple juice in place of a urine sample - and ruled that the juice was drug-free.

The Northeast clinic is supposed to take urine samples from every person on probation - as well as thousands of people who have been paroled or charged with crimes - but a study by The Washington Times shows that the clients can send friends to take the drug tests for them, or smuggle in liquids to be tested.

Over a one-month period, two reporters took a total of five tests at the facility - to which D.C. Superior Court sends as many as 170 persons each day - and found that:

"That's terrible," said the city's probation chief, Alan Schuman, when told how easy it was to trick the system. "What you're saying is frightening."

"We don't have faith in the program," one probation officer said before the study began. "The results we get are no good."

Officials at the D.C. Alcohol and Drug Abuse Services Administration, which runs the facility, said clients rarely go through that much trouble to fool the system, and that some of the problems uncovered stem from a staffing shortage.

"We've had a shortage of people down there. But I'm not trying to make excuses," John Jackson, administrator of the drug agency, said last week when told the results of the study. "If we have to fix our system, we'll fix it."

Aside from testing everyone on probation, the clinic, in the unit block of N Street NE, collects samples from convicts who have been ordered to undergo drug treatment as a condition of parole, and from some people who have been charged with crimes but have not yet gone to trial. The samples are tested at a city lab and the results reported to probation officers and judges.

But nearly two years ago a consultant warned the drug agency that some of the samples might not be legitimate.

"Monitoring of the collection of urine samples is not always scrupulously observed," said the consultant's study, conducted in 1987 by Rennob International Inc. and presented to ADASA in February 1988. Under the heading "Questionable Reliability," the consultant cited a "lack of system of checks and balances, quality control, and adequate security."

At the time, Mr. Jackson said a staffing shortage had made it difficult for workers to watch clients carefully, and that staffing was subsequently increased.

The staff shortages and sample collection problems apparently persist. To test the system, The Washington Times obtained forms that D.C. Superior Court uses to refer people to the clinic. The forms were filled out with fictitious names for the clients and probation officers, along with fictitious case numbers, social security numbers, birthdays and phone numbers. The reporters visited the facility on separate occasions from June 28 to July 28.

The only correct information on the forms was the date. Clients must go to the clinic on the day they are referred so they cannot wait several days for drugs to disappear from their systems and then take the tests. During one visit, someone was turned away from the clinic because he was a day late.

However, workers at the clinic relied on the clients for honesty about virtually everything else. The clients signed a log book and handed in their referral forms, but no one asked any client for identification to show that he was the person whose name was in the book or on the form. In one case, a client was asked to recite his Social Security number so the clinic worker could check it with the number on the form.

The lack of a strong ID check provides the first opportunity to cheat. Several clients, speaking outside the clinic, said some people send a friend or relative to take tests for them. A probation officer said that in the case of one client, "His wife told me he gets his co-workers to go over there and take his urine tests."

Mr. Jackson said he does not believe people frequently take urine tests for someone else. "That's just not been the kind of problem we've had," he said.

Once signed in, each client was given a clear plastic cup that could hold about 4 liquid ounces and which had a screw-off cap. A supervisor led three or four men at a time to a bathroom, where they stood at urinals or toilets and filled the cups.

The supervisors are actually supposed to see the men urinate into the cups, said Silas Bond, who runs the facility. But the clients usually had their backs to the supervisor, who stood 3 to 8 feet away at the doorway or the sink and was sometimes distracted by conversations with clients.

On the first two visits, each reporter turned in a legitimate sample. For the last three visits, one of the reporters went to the clinic with a hand lotion tube - like a small toothpaste tube - hidden in his pants. The tube was filled once with urine from home, once with apple juice, and once with urine purchased from someone in the bathroom of a nearby McDonald's restaurant for $4.

With the supervisor standing a few feet away, the reporter pulled the tube through his zipper and squeezed the liquid into the cup. That description shocked Mr. Schuman.

"The process is, you watch them pee in a bottle," he said. "That's just basic. You'd think that's so mechanical, they'd be able to take care of that.

"Shorter than that, it [the test] is useless."

"They don't watch," said a man outside the clinic, one of several clients who explained how to smuggle in a container of liquid and surreptitiously fill the cups.

"Most people use a syringe," another man said.

He said clean samples are usually available from other men at the clinic.

"Most of the time someone will just give you their urine," he said. "They understand what you're going through."

Several lawyers who represent people on probation said some clients have told of smuggling in clean samples for the tests. The lawyers said they do not believe it happens often.

Mr. Jackson said people taking or buying urine from strangers are gambling, because they don't know that it will be drug-free. In fact, the sample purchased from the man at the fast-food restaurant tested positive for methadone.

Nevertheless, ADASA officials said there are not enough workers at the clinic to carefully watch everyone. "Mr. Bond has been without the adequate number of staff for over nine months," Mr. Jackson said. "He has been dwindled down to almost the bare-bones staff."

He said a contractor has been hired and will soon join the facility to bolster the staff of city employees.

In the meantime, Mr. Jackson said, his agency cannot limit the number of clients going to the clinic because they are referred by the courts. D.C. Superior Court would be responsible for providing better identification, Mr. Jackson said. He said people referred by the court are not in ADASA treatment programs, so the agency does not keep picture IDs or any information about them, and does not ask for any.

"I thought they did ask for ID," Mr. Schuman said. Mr. Bond said the ID check comes at the end, when the client turns in his sample at a desk. Clinic workers ask each client his age and check it against the birth date on the form. Mr. Bond also said that, when a client hands in his sample, he is given a label to attach to the cup and is asked to read the Social Security number on the label to verify that it is correct.

The clients were, in fact, asked to look at the number on the label and nod or say, "That's right."

As for the apple juice that was reported to be drug-free, drug agency officials first said the sample should have been rejected by the lab as "untestable." Mr. Jackson later said the test can detect some chemicals to reveal that a sample is not urine, but there are no chemicals in apple juice to set off a warning.

"The test process is predicated on everything being urine," Mr. Jackson said.

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