Urine Drug Test vs Mouth Swab Drug Test: Process, Benefits and Detection Period

To make it easier for employees to be informed about drug testing methods, many companies have started using oral swabs as the method of choice, but that’s not always the best option.

In this article, we will discuss Urine Drug Test versus Mouth Swab Drug Test and their differences.

Both saliva and urine drug tests screen for certain drugs in the human body, but they do not screen for all drugs. Saliva drug tests screen for marijuana, cocaine, heroin, amphetamines, and methamphetamines.

Saliva drug tests are used during the pre-employment phase of employment because they can be administered to employees involved in job interviews and those who work in safety-sensitive positions. Saliva testing has a 90% accuracy rate meaning that the employee will fail if using illegal drugs.

On the other hand, urine drug tests screen for marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and amphetamines. Urine testing is also used in the pre-employment phase and post-accident investigations to detect drug use. It has a 95% accuracy rate meaning that the employee will fail if they use illegal drugs.

So why are saliva and urine drug tests rarely administered at random? One reason is that it takes a long time for saliva or urine to dry into a sample size. The sample needs to be dried before it can be tested.

The test also needs to be analyzed quickly so that the result would not lose accuracy. So, the fact that saliva and urine samples take too long to dry and examine makes them impractical for random drug tests.

Another reason is that saliva and urine tests are expensive to do. Saliva samples cost around $100 per test, while urine samples cost about $15 per test. To make the screening process more economical, other screening methods have been developed.

This article concludes that the urine drug test is better than the oral drug test. This is because saliva can dilute drugs in the system, and there were some problems with those saliva tests that they were not able to detect certain types of drugs. It’s advised to do a urine drug test over a saliva drug test if you have other options.

To more learn about Urine and Saliva Drug Test Benefits and Detection