Drug Abuse Proficiency Testing

Abstract

Concerning drugs, proficiency testing has undoubtedly been a major contributing factor to improved detection of drug abuse in humans. Some of the improvement may be due to advances in technology; this is possibly the case with improvement in the detection of morphine and methadone. The improvement in the determination of methamphetamine within 3 surveys over 6 mo. can clearly be attributed to proficiency testing. In drug screening for cocaine abuse, the poor results in proficiency testing for the detection of the primary metabolite, benzoylecgonine, demonstrated that laboratories are not proficient in this screening.