Many schools, festival organizers or employers have started to use drug test kits for detection of any drug addict in their place in addition to domestic uses. This is only to identify the problem and the common test types involve urine or blood samples. However, oral drug tests are becoming increasingly popular since the sample collection is very easy from the mouths of people to be tested.

What it does and how?

As the name indicates, a saliva drug test involves the use of biological specimen, saliva from the mouth of the subject, which can be analyzed within minutes by the oral drug test kits. Such kits have made the process of testing easy as the long procedure in the labs and screening is reduced by this method. There are many types of kits designed for this purpose. Most of the time, all the kits are simple and efficient in giving the results and use a swab resembling a toothbrush and a vial. The saliva sample is collected by touching the swab between the lower gum and cheek and then pushed into vial for certain chemicals to react chemically and identify the presence of drugs.

Factors Affecting the Drug Detection Times

Whether it is an oral drug test or the ones which use urine, blood etc. there are many factors which influence the detection times given by the kit and hence can vary from person to person;

• Extent of drug Usage: The people who are pure drug addicts with a habit of taking drugs frequently everyday can show a positive result faster than the people who use drugs very few times in a month e.g. 3-4 days per month
• Age and Health of Person: Human metabolism slows down in process if a person has a bad health or is quite old. In such cases the detection times may be longer
• Weight and Metabolism of Individual: People who are heavy weight or have more mass on their bodies, often tend to have a slower metabolism, thus showing delays in detection times for drug testing. On the other hand, the people who are thin, and are very quick in working or exercising on a daily basis, tend to have a faster metabolism meaning shorter detection times

Anyhow in most of the cases, the drug detection times by saliva tests range within minutes showing consistency of results.