The American journal of drug and alcohol abuse
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Am J Drug Alcohol Abuse · Aug 1999
Multicenter Study Clinical Trial Controlled Clinical TrialDetection of illicit opioid and cocaine use in methadone maintenance treatment.
Urine toxicology is the gold standard for estimating the prevalence of illicit drug use in methadone maintenance treatment (MMT). The frequency of urine testing may be crucial for establishing accurate use rates. Infrequent testing may lead programs to undercount active drug users and to target interventions too narrowly. ⋯ Patients who were drug positive according to the research tests but drug negative according to the program tests tended to be infrequent users. The data suggest that standard urine testing practices in MMT programs may result in underestimates of the prevalence of opioid and cocaine use. More frequent testing, even for time-limited periods, should produce more accurate depictions of drug use prevalence and help indicate the direction of interventions.