Home Drug Tests and Your Child

Parents have good reason to be concerned about drug use. A 2001 study of eighth-grade students found that 37% had smoked tobacco, 51% had used alcohol, 20% had used marijuana, and 15% had used other drugs. Some parents may wonder whether at-home drug tests could help prevent drug and alcohol abuse and whether these tests are reliable. Researchers from Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, studied the types and availability of drug tests available for purchase on the Internet.

Researchers used the search engines Yahoo!, Google, and Ixquick to identify eight Internet sites that sold home drug-testing products. Information about the type of product sold, the drugs detected, and cost was recorded. Researchers also purchased one sample of each type of product and reviewed the informational materials provided in the package and on the products' website. They noted whether the site offered information about how to perform a drug test, whether it recommended obtaining a teen's consent, and what to do after receiving a negative or positive result.

Several drug tests were available for parents to use at home. They included a hair test, saliva and breath tests to check for alcohol use, and multiple urine tests that checked for a variety of drugs. In some cases, a teen's hair or urine sample was collected and mailed back into a lab for testing; in other cases, parents performed the test at home and got instant results.

But researchers found that the information provided by the websites was not without inaccuracies. Most of the websites gave conflicting or incomplete information about which drugs were detected by the tests, and none of the sites provided detailed instructions on how to collect valid urine specimens. Researchers noted that these tests have a high potential for false-positive or false-negative results because of inaccurate testing procedures. Also, the sites offered inconsistent advice on whether a child's specimen should be collected without his or her consent, and often implied that a parent should take a child's specimen even if he or she refused to give it. Most of the websites also did not offer information about what to do if a child tested positive for drugs or how a parent-child relationship would be affected if a parent forced a child to submit to drug testing.

What This Means to You: If you are concerned that your child may be using or experimenting with smoking, alcohol, or drugs, talk to your child's doctor first. He or she can offer professional medical advice and counseling or recommend a counselor to you and your child. He or she may recommend that your child have a drug test. Taking a drug test at a lab or doctor's office is best left to professionals who can interpret the results properly and advise you on what to do with the information.

Source: Sharon Levy, MD, MPH; Shari Van Hook, PA-C, MPH; John Knight, MD; Pediatrics, April 2004

Reviewed by: Steven Dowshen, MD
Date reviewed: May 2004

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