Drug and Alcohol Testing Q&A - 2004

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Old prescription, 1993 - positive for amphetamine?

From: Dr. M
Date: 30 Aug 2004
Time: 13:36:34 -0700
Remote Name: 68.164.15.82

Comments

I received results on a federal test for an individual who confirmed positive for marijuana, as well as amphetamine>10,000 and methamphetamine >10,000. The donor stated he has a prescription for "ADHD med" and that he would fax it to me. I called the pharmacy and they had no record of any such medicine being written for the donor. I had to wait for the donor to fax me the information. It turns out that he had a very old prescription for Ritalin (circa 1993). This would not account for the positive Amphetamine, but I have two questions resulting from this for future reference:

First, while waiting for all of this information could I have reported out the drug screen as "positive mairjuana" and note that further results were pending?

Second, let's say the prescription had been for Selegiline or something that could have accounted for the large amount in confirmatory testing. If the prescription had been that old, could I still acept it?  (Obviously the selegiline would have had a different indication but there was recently a posting on "old medicines" and use of these meds.) Just how far back can we go? In the past when I've discussed it with the lab, they can't say that an old script would not cause the levels seen for other results I've reported but I've never had a script that old. This one ended up being reported positive for both drugs and I held it waiting for all the results but I'm interested for future learning.