PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

On January 1, 2011, CDS celebrated its 20 year anniversary. With this milestone, I am very pleased to introduce this inaugural issue of CDS Dispatch to our approximately 7,000 clients and customers throughout the United States and Canada. Depending on the subject content of future articles, this publication will be issued on a monthly or quarterly basis.

CDS Dispatch is designed to be educational and informative for anyone who needs to stay abreast of the facts and issues related to drug testing and safety in the workplace.  The newsletter will focus on current issues and legislation, as well as trends and practices related to drug testing and workplace safety.  We will also spotlight the array of products and services

CDS provides to its valued customers.

I hope this and future issues of CDS Dispatch will be informative and beneficial to you in providing a safe, secure and productive workplace. If there are any subjects you would like addressed in a future issue of our newsletter, please email me directly at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

As always, you may contact me at any time to discuss any concerns / issues you may have or to just say hello.

Dale Hagedorn  

IMPACT OF NEW DOT DRUG TESTING PANELS

The Department of Transportation (DOT) released on August 13, 2010, the final rules amending certain provisions of its drug testing procedures dealing with laboratory testing of urine specimens, which became effective October 1, 2010. Several of the drug testing programs administered by CDS agreed to accept the new testing guidelines for certain illegal substances.  After 3 months, Quest Diagnostics reports the following results: (from Results, a Quest Diagnostics periodical published January 2011):

"On October 1, 2010, the revised HSS Mandatory Guidelines for Federal Workplace Drug Testing Programs  and the revised DOT 49 CFR Part 40 rules took effect. After three months of data, we have findings from our DOT regulated results to report:

As the cutoff levels for urine drug tests were lowered for cocaine metabolite and amphetamines (amphetamine and methamphetamine), making the testing more sensitive, it's not surprising that we are seeing increased positivity for these testing groups. In the first 90 days of testing, cocaine positivity is up 36% and amphetamines positivity is up 33%. We also continue to see an up tick in the percentage of specimens that screen positive for amphetamines, but fail to confirm by GC/MS. An obvious implication of these increases includes an increase in turnaround times as additional confirmatory testing is being performed. Additionally, customers should anticipate additional MRO reviews (due to the increased incidence of confirmed positives.)

While the additional test for MDMA has yielded a positivity rate similar to historical non-regulated data (0.004%), the test for 6-AM has provided an interesting preliminary observation. Not only are we finding more positive test results for 6-AM (0.011%) than expected, many of the confirmed positive tests for 6-AM are not testing positive for morphine, leading one to believe that this test may be detecting more heroin use than previously suspected, based on urine tests. Consequently, it appears that a separate screening test for 6-AM may be proving effective at catching more heroin users."

If you are interested in obtaining more information on adopting the new guidelines, please contact the professional staff at CDS.

K2, a type of herbal incense, has been gaining a lot of media attention for its usage as a drug.  K2 has been labeled as "Fake Weed" due to its marijuana like effects when smoked.  Matt Sczesny, with St. Louis News Channel 4, reported that many middle-aged adults in St. Louis had stocked up on K2 before it became illegal on August 28, 2010.   Currently, K2 cannot be detected by the laboratory in drug tests, which may be a major reason for its growth in popularity.  There have been very few studies on K2 usage as a drug.  The following article from LiveScience, "Fake Weed, Real Drug: K2 Causing Hallucinations in Teens" describes the increase in K2 usage among teens, the adverse effects, and the dangers of using the drug.

"Teens are getting high on an emerging drug called "fake weed," a concoction also known as K2 and "spice" that is also causing hallucinations, vomiting, agitation and other dangerous effects.

In the last month, Dr. Anthony Scalzo, a professor of toxicology at Saint Louis University, has seen nearly 30 cases of teenagers experiencing these adverse effects after smoking the fake weed, a legal substance that reportedly offers a marijuana-like high.

"K2 use is not limited to the Midwest; reports of its use are cropping up all over the country," Scalzo said. "I think K2 is likely a bigger problem than we're aware of at this time." For instance, Atlanta has seen about 12 cases recently.

K2 has been sold since 2006 as incense or potpourri for about $30 to $40 per three gram bag - comparable in cost to marijuana.

"K2 may be a mixture of herbal and spice plant products, but it is sprayed with a potent psychotropic drug and likely contaminated with an unknown toxic substance that is causing many adverse effects," said Scalzo, who also directs the Missouri Regional Poison Control Center.

This K2 compound was first created in the mid-1990s in the lab of organic chemist John W. Huffman of Clemson University, who studies cannabinoid receptors. He's not sure how the recipe for what is named JWH-018 (his initials) got picked up, but he did publish details on a series of compounds including JWH-018 in a book chapter. Even before that book came out, he recalls learning that in China and Korea people were selling the compound as a plant growth stimulant.

As for where it was first smoked or used as a recreational drug, Huffman thinks perhaps somewhere in Europe.

"Apparently somebody picked it up, I think in Europe, on the idea of doping this incense mixture with the compound and smoking it," Huffman told LiveScience. "You can get very high on it. It's about 10 times more active than THC," the active ingredient in marijuana.     

From a chemist's perspective, that means K2 has an affinity for the cannabinoid brain receptor (CB1) that's about 10 times greater than THC. For the less chemically inclined, it means you can smoke a lot less K2 to get just as high.

The compound works on the brain in the same way as marijuana's active ingredient THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol. Both compounds bind to the CB1 receptors, which primarily affect the central nervous system. JWH-018 also binds to the peripheral brain (CB2) receptors, which are involved in the immune system, Huffman said.

Since JWH-018 or K2 acts like marijuana, you'd expect to see the same effects, including sleepiness, relaxation, reduced blood pressure, and at high doses, hallucinations and delusions.

While some patients between the ages of 14 and 21 were showing up with hallucinations, other symptoms, such as increased agitation and elevated blood pressure and heart rates, didn't match up with marijuana.

Scalza speculates either another compound is responsible for the nasty side effects, or the concentration of JWH-018 is too high.

To answer this question, Scalzo is having doctors test patients' urine for JWH-018 and other compounds, but he is having trouble getting patients to agree to the test.

"This is not something that people are agreeing to," Scalzo said during a telephone interview. "Here's a legal substance that we don't know really that much about that people are putting into their bodies without quality control."

And even though doctors like Scalzo say they'd like to help the teens, that's not enough. "Phenomenally, people are saying no. They're afraid someone is going to find something," though Scalzo has no idea why they'd be afraid.

Further testing is needed, but Scalzo says the symptoms, such as fast heart beat, dangerously elevated blood pressure, pale skin and vomiting suggest that K2 is affecting the cardiovascular system of users. It also is believed to affect the central nervous system, causing severe, potentially life-threatening hallucinations and, in some cases, seizures.

"It's like playing Russian roulette. You don't know what it's going to do to you," Huffman said. "You're a potential winner of a Darwin award," referring to the tongue-in-cheek awards given to people who "do a service to humanity by removing themselves from the gene pool."

In addition to the compound being made without strict quality control or any regulation, as far as anyone knows, the compound itself has never been tested on humans. And when it was tested on mice, Huffman said, the animals were euthanized at the end of the experiment, so scientists don't even know how it affects mice long-term. "And mice are not humans," Huffman said."

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Future Articles 

Medical Marijuana in the Workplace

Safetrack - Tracking  of Safety Training Online  

Tip of the Day

Quote of the Day 

"The things we fear most in organizations - fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances are the primary sources of creativity."