| Local head shops say they may have to prepare for a different kind of Stampede this summer – the influx of customers looking to cover up their recreational drug use.
In Calgary, only a handful of stores — mostly bong shops — sell products that help employees beat company drug tests for marijuanaa. Drug tests are a source of much anxiety for a large number of workers, particularly those in the trucking industry, people on probation and, of course, rig workers, says Lisa Dawn, an employee at the Hemporium.
Dawn, whose store sells masking agents, says it’s unfortunate that a lot of people have to buy them. "Truckers, riggers, cruise ship employees. And often right after long weekends, Christmas and Stampede," she adds.
The dreaded employee drug test primarily affects pot-smokers because hard drugs leave a person’s system shortly after use – laying off of harder drugs for a couple of days will usually solve the problem, while cannabis takes six to eight weeks to clear a person’s system, depending on body type.
This targeting of pot-smokers is hypocritical, according to Ben Brech, owner of the Sweet Leaf Hemp Company, a store that sells a powdered drink mix designed to temporarily flush toxins out of their systems.
"When I came here from Toronto, it was piss testing everywhere," says Brech, a former truck driver and no stranger to drug-testing policies. "A lot of jobs will say you can come to work hung-over, but if you test positive for THC (tetrahydrocannibinol, the active principle of cannabis), they figure you’re high on the job. It’s kind of ridiculous."
Brech says workers are often sent to his store by their own sympathetic employers. "A lot of bosses are cool with it. Some guys will come in, buy a whole case and sell the product off to their friends up north."
Do they work? If an employee follows the directions closely, Brech says, then the success rate is high.
"Very few people come back to tell me it failed, (and it’s) usually because they didn’t follow the directions. One guy drank the product but didn’t urinate before the test, so he basically pissed all of the toxins into the cup."
There are a variety of options available to marijuana users looking to beat the company drug test. Drink mixes claim to have a very high success rate, but complicated directions that need to be followed to the letter. Masking agents, while simpler than powdered drink mixes, have a reputation for coming up inconclusive, which always leads to retesting. They work by hooking up with the canabanoids in the urine, which blocks them from the test.
Then, of course, there is always synthetic urine, which is often strapped to the leg in a pouch and "urinated" through a plastic tube. |
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