cannabisnews.com: Citgo To Use Avitar Drug Tests 





Citgo To Use Avitar Drug Tests 
Posted by FoM on October 12, 2000 at 13:39:43 PT
By Ronald Rosenberg, Globe Staff
Source: Boston Globe
Avitar Inc., which recently developed a saliva-based drug test that replaces a widely used urine-based exam, yesterday said it signed a contract with Citgo Petroleum Corp. to provide its test to job applicants at 14,500 Citgo-brand gas stations, convenience stores and Quick Lube outlets.Citgo's franchisees can use the 15-minute drug tests primarily as a preemployment screening, but also after a workplace accident, said Peter P. Phildius, chairman of Canton-based Avitar. Each saliva test can screen for marijuana, cocaine, opiates, and newer ''club drugs'' such as Ecstasy, E, and XTC.
The contract is the company's largest to date. If implemented at all Citgo locations nationwide, it would have an annual value of $6.5 million, Phildius said. He said Avitar is supplying the comprehensive substance-abuse test, which it calls ORALadvantage, and an earlier version called ORALscreen that only tests for marijuana, cocaine, and opiates.Phildius said an advantage of the new test is that it is often done in front of an employer, such as a hiring manager, with results in five to 15 minutes. By contrast, results of urine-based tests can take several days and require paying someone to collect the sample and send it to a laboratory.Avitar's tests are used primarily for hourly wage workers, who are often young and mobile and move from job to job in the construction industry or on manufacturing lines. Corporate buyers of the Avitar tests, which cost about $22 each, include Archer Daniels Midland, Dell Computer, TJ Maxx, and Shoneys.Phildius said ORALadvantage requires putting a small sponge in the mouth to absorb oral fluids, primarily saliva, for two minutes. The foam device then is removed and four drops are squeezed on four coated testing plates, each with red lines. The disappearance of any of the lines means the person is testing positive for one of the four illegal drugs.''In the $1.5 billion drug testing industry, which is 95 percent urine exams, we have the potential to convert a lot of those tests to on-site oral testing with much quicker results,'' said Phildius.Avitar is among a group of oral fluid diagnostic companies using human saliva to develop medical tests that replace blood-based exams. Epitope Inc. of Beaverton, Ore., has developed a saliva test that can detect one of the AIDS viruses while Saliva Diagnostic Systems Inc. of New York has a test for Helicobacter pylori, the bacteria found in the stomach that causes gastritis and ulcers.A fourth US-based company, Biex Inc. of Dublin, Calif., recently announced a quick saliva-based diagnostic test to measure the presence of estriol, a sex hormone that increases two to three weeks before preterm delivery in pregnant women. The test can determine whether an expectant mother will go into labor ahead of her due date or later.Some medical researchers say saliva-based tests have their limits, however, because the concentration of material being measured is significantly smaller than what can be found in circulating blood.That limitation, however, is not stopping the oral fluid diagnostic companies looking to develop a wide range of saliva-based diagnostic tests to detect infectious disesase.Avitar recently raised $3 million to develop oral fluid disease detection tests starting with Lyme disease. It is also planning a saliva-based pregnancy test, an influenza exam and what Phildius calls ''the holy grail of all tests,'' an oral diabetes detection test. Note: Job applicants to undergo new saliva-based exam. Source: Boston Globe (MA) Author: Ronald Rosenberg, Globe StaffPublished: October 12, 2000Copyright: 2000 Globe Newspaper Company. Contact: letter globe.com Address: P.O. Box 2378, Boston, MA 02107-2378 Website: http://www.boston.com/globe/ Feedback: http://extranet.globe.com/LettersEditor/default.asp CannabisNews Drug Testing Archives:http://cannabisnews.com/news/list/drug_testing.shtml
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Comment #7 posted by tokeboy on October 14, 2000 at 07:34:12 PT:
Let them buy our weed for us...
Perfect! Hey, use the a**holes to subsidize your spleef. Buy stock in drug testing companies and watch your portfolio soar. Should be enough to finance trips to Amsterdam and other friendly places. I'm gonna call my broker right now...
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Comment #6 posted by sibyl on October 14, 2000 at 05:17:14 PT
danger
Because everyone is getting so pot parinoid, many of my friends in the last 2 years have quit, only to do a more dangerous drug because its not as easily detected. So now I see people losing their homes and lives reather than a little memory. Get real people and start voteing for whats right.
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Comment #5 posted by AOCP on October 13, 2000 at 20:19:37 PT:
Now that's funny!
>Avitar Inc., which recently developed a saliva-based drug test that replaces a widely used urine-based exam, yesterday said it signed a contract with Citgo Petroleum Corp. to provide its test to job applicants at 14,500 Citgo-brand gas stations, convenience stores and Quick Lube outlets.Are you kidding me? I work part-time at a gas station to help pay for school and who the hell DOESN'T do some drug or another? What exactly are these people afraid of?Beyond that, gas stations allow one to play the role of "Addiction Maintenance Specialist" or cancer merchant - aka - tobacco dealer. You don't even need saliva to tell these people from the non-users ... just come within 10 feet. The smell is overwhelming (i'm a smoker and can smell it on myself ... yuk). Oh, that's right! Selling death to people is ok with THAT drug! Why? Who cares? Some dumb sitcom is on! Quick, absolve yourself of any and all rational or logical or fair thinking by ignoring the problem until it's offspring come for you and there's no one to speak up. I have no respect for these testing people or their pathetic message at all.
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Comment #4 posted by observer on October 12, 2000 at 23:13:44 PT
''Drug'' Testing Morphs into Pregnancy Testing
...It is also planning a saliva-based pregnancy testIt is not unknown for companies, to keep down costs, to say they are giving Patriotic Drug Tests (all stand and salute), which they do... but also, without tellin' to administer pregnancy tests also. (Cheap, only require a very small urine sample.) Being a mother means taking time off from work. Gals that "pos out" on that test get dismissed, but, perhaps for other reasons, shall we say. (Richard Miller mentions such an example in Drug Warriors I recall.) Giving a company a "sample" means losing control of that sample. (Especially if you miss the cup and hit dem faces, but that aside.) No way to tell what they do with it. Why not screen for diseases (like cancer, say) too? Let Jane go before she has to take six months off and make a big insurance claim for a birth; let Joe go because he may be making a large insurance claim for prostate cancer (only he doesn't know it yet). I think we'll see there is much profitable information governments and corporations may obtain from "drug" testing our bodily fluids.
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Comment #3 posted by FoM on October 12, 2000 at 16:57:22 PT
Oh kaptinemo!
Before I get caught up in watching the History Channel I wanted to say that I was only kidding. Don't ever change the way you say things! You're good and we learn alot from you!Tonight The History Channel is on Ecstasy and LSD. Timothy Leary's dead oh no he's outside looking in!I think that's how the lyrics go.I'm really learning alot. I don't know anything about Ecstasy but I do remember by little flashbacks LSD. LOL!
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Comment #2 posted by FoM on October 12, 2000 at 14:15:32 PT
Yuk!
I just put a handful of m&m's in my mouth and clicked on here to read and your Ptui! just made me feel sick! Yuk! Only kidding. That will teach me to try to eat some candy and read the news! All I want is to be free to own my own body. No one should be able to violate anyone and drug testing is a violation. 
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Comment #1 posted by kaptinemo on October 12, 2000 at 13:53:39 PT:
Want my saliva, you wannabe narks? Here's some!
(Ptui! Right in yer eye! An' there's plenty more where that came from!)They still don't get it. The test only measures *presence*, not level of impairment. Which is the primary stated rationale for the test. Employment takes a back seat to worker safety...or is normally supposed to.Now, if you demanded that your testers undergo a test for alcohol, how many would be so quick to volunteer? Hand one of these sucker-like things to the boss, and watch his reaction.It's long past time that Korporate Amerika learned what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
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