MONITORING THE CRACK EPIDEMIC THROUGH URINALYSIS AND EXAMINING THE

monitoring the crack epidemic through urinalysis and examining the validity of crack self-reports n.t. lu1, b.g. taylor1, k.j. riley2 1n

MONITORING THE CRACK EPIDEMIC THROUGH URINALYSIS AND EXAMINING THE
VALIDITY OF CRACK SELF-REPORTS
N.T. Lu1, B.G. Taylor1, K.J. Riley2
1National Institute of Justice, Department of Justice, 810 Seventh
Street, NW, Washington, DC 20531, USA; 2RAND Corporation, 1700 Main
Street, Santa Monica, CA 9047, USA
Introduction: Abuse of crack continues to be of major concern. Because
of limits to biological testing, self-report has been the only
mechanism for distinguishing crack use from powder use. Researchers
have reported that smoking crack generates unique pyrolysis products
that are detectable in urine, but studies have not addressed how these
products could be used as the marker for crack use for a large group
of samples. The National Institute of Justice developed a project to
validate the technology.
Methods: The project consisted of 1) interviews conducted with and
urine specimens collected from 2,327 adult arrestees; 2) development
and validation of procedures for routine GC/MS confirmation of crack
use; 3) establishment of standard profiles for two crack pyrolysis
products, anhydroecgonine methylester (AEME) and ecgonidine (ECD); and
4) using a positive urinalysis result as the validity standard to
assess the extent to which arrestees underreport crack cocaine use as
compared to the use of marijuana, opiates, and methamphetamine.
Results & Discussions: Our results indicated that nearly 31% of the
specimens were positive for cocaine, of which more than 88% were
positive for crack. This resulted in crack prevalence rates of nearly
31% for females and 27% for males. In addition, through comparison of
urinalysis results with the self-reports, we found that a considerable
amount of underreporting occurs for all four drugs (cocaine,
methamphetamine, opiates, marijuana). In most cases, only about half
the people who had a positive urinalysis test for drugs admitted to
using drugs. Overall, the least amount of underreporting occurred for
marijuana (63.6% told the “truth”), followed by methamphetamine use
(56.1% told the “truth”), crack use (48.2% told the “truth”) and
opiate use (45.9% told the “truth”).
Keywords: Crack detection; Urinalysis; Pyrolysis; GC/MS
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