When positive is a negative - urine testing of military personnel

Soldiers Magazine, Nov, 2003 by Heike Hasenauer

SSG Shannon Brown of Tripler Army Medical Center's Company A in Honolulu, Hawaii, waited in a stark classroom--a designated holding area behind the hospital--for the Unit Prevention Leader to call his name.

When she did, Brown handed her his ID card, confirmed some personal statistics and removed his uniform jacket to show nothing was concealed underneath. She handed him a bottle, had him affix his Social Security number to it and sent him down the hall, shadowed by a designated observer, to provide a urine sample, in a designated, previously checked latrine.

The procedure happens every day somewhere across the Army. And somewhere, soldiers are sweating the impending consequences of what they did a night or two before.

Consequences for Users

Army policy dictates that all soldiers who test positive for drugs will be processed for separation, said MSG Kimberly Henry of the Army Center for Substance Abuse Programs in Alexandria, Va., the office that establishes policy guidance for the Army's substance-abuse prevention program.

Commanders may consider a soldier's rank and military record, and show more tolerance for lower-ranking soldiers whose urinalysis comes up positive than they do for career officers.

In determining a soldier's fate, commanders also consider behavior--such as theft, violence and drug dealing--that may have been related to the drug use, said MAJ Timothy Lyons, commander of TAMC's Forensic Toxicology Drag Testing Laboratory. The bottom line is "there has to be a penalty for drug use if you're going to have a deterrence program," he said.

"At my level, I must initiate action to separate soldiers who have positive urinalysis reports," said CPT James Joyner III, commander of TAMC's Co. A. "But my superiors determine whether or not to eliminate soldiers or rehabilitate them, according to guidance provided in Army Regulation 600-85."

Of 410 soldiers in Joyner's company, four tested positive for drugs last year--three had used marijuana and one had abused prescription drugs.

Drug-Use Statistics

While records indicate an overall positive rate of one percent for active-duty soldiers in 2000, the percentage has been slightly higher over the past three years, at 1.3 percent, Lyons said. It doesn't sound like much, but more than 9,000 active-duty soldiers are discharged every year--roughly half of a division--for illicit drug use.

Their drug use might very well have affected not only their own performance of duties but other soldiers' performance as well, Lyons said.

Despite changes to the testing system since the 1970s, the drug of choice hasn't changed. It's still marijuana, said Lyons. It's followed by cocaine, amphetamines (including methamphetamines) and ecstasy. And 18- to 22-year-old soldiers are most likely to abuse the drugs, with the highest incidence of drug use found in new recruits at Military Entrance Processing Centers.

Lyons said young soldiers are easily tempted because marijuana and other drugs are readily available and relatively inexpensive.

Urinalysis Procedures

Under the Defense Department's Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention Program, individual commanders determine when to test their soldiers. "It's their program," Lyons said.

Some commanders choose to test at 100 percent, Henry said, because random testing of only a percentage of soldiers can mean that some soldiers are tested repeatedly and others aren't tested at all.

Whether the tests are conducted on a monthly or bimonthly basis, or less frequently, and include an entire unit or a percentage of the unit, the time sequence cannot be predictable, Henry said.

The urinalysis process begins when a unit commander notifies his Unit Prevention Leader that he'd like to conduct a drug test. Every unit has a UPL, who must be an NCO, Joyner said.

The UPL performs the function as an additional duty. If the commander elects to test 10 percent of his soldiers, the UPL would identify them through a computer printout and notify the soldiers on the "hit list" no more than two hours before the test, Joyner said.

A stringent process follows, from the moment the soldier enters a holding area, where administrative checks are performed, to the time the filled specimen bottle is returned to the UPL, said SSG April Norton, UPL for TAMC's Co. A.

The designated observer plays a critical role in the procedure, Norton said. Because the observer is responsible for the integrity of the urine sample, he must actually watch the urine leaving the soldier's body, Henry added.

When a sample is returned to Norton, she checks it to be sure it's warm and that there's been no tampering with the bottle cap. She seals the bottle and initials it, and the observer signs a unit ledger, which can be used in legal proceedings as sworn affidavit that he observed the soldier urinate in the bottle, Henry said.

Samples are boxed and delivered by the UPL to the Army Substance Abuse Program, ASAP. In Hawaii, that office is located at Schofield Barracks. There the Social Security number and other information is again checked, the boxes of specimens are sealed and numbered to indicate the regions from which they originated, and the UPL again initials the box.