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From:
N. Hartenbaum, MD, MPH
Date: 06 Mar 2006
Time: 20:31:51 -0800
Remote Name: 68.46.0.14
Drug testing conducted under DOT requirements should NOT be conducted as part of the examination but non-regulated testing can be done when there is good reason for it. The concern with methadone is that is substitutes one addiction for another. From the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration's Drug and Human Performance Fact Sheet on methadone:
"The drug manufacturer cautions that methadone may impair the mental and/or physical abilities required for the performance of potentially hazardous tasks, and that the sedative effects of the drug may be enhanced by concurrent use of other CNS depressants, including alcohol. In healthy, non-methadone using volunteers, single doses of methadone will impair driving ability. Numerous European studies of long-term methadone maintenance patients have shown that appropriately administered methadone does not cause significant psychomotor or cognitive impairment when administered regularly and when the subject abstains from all other drugs. However, in the majority of cases, patients did not exhibit stable abstinence from drug use and had an increased occurrence of simultaneous psychiatric/neurotic disorders or personality disturbances which, by themselves, could be a reason to doubt their driving ability."
(Other Fact Sheets can be found at http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/research/job185drugs/technical-page.htm)