Joined Army-Tested positive for Cocaine=BS

[Don Vito Corleone]

At least in the Army, testing positive for drugs no longer automatically kicks you out. Testing positive for drug use has never been punishable under a court martial proceeding. (Selling the stuff will get you imprisioned, smoking the stuff in front of authorities will get you punitive actions, but testing positive can only result in administrative action......discharge.)

Be aware - this is NOT the case in all services - the Army is much more tolerant than the Air Force. Ordinarily a single positive UA in the AF without a legal explanation (e.g., a legal presciption) will nearly always lead to a discharge, and a positive result for anything other than marijuana will generally lead to a court-martial. Only in an extraordinary situation will a person who tests positive not be discharged.

 

[technogeeky]

Andrew,

I'm sorry about your situation. I know how it feels being innocent but "proven" guilty. Not with this sort of life importance, however.


Good luck!




Aceman - You should grow up. Stop yelling at someone and start listening. Learn to ask a question or two before yelling based upon your assumed meaning of his sentences. I don't care how experienced you are or how anything you are - you need to have some respect for other people.


-tg

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

Aceman - You should grow up. Stop yelling at someone and start listening. Learn to ask a question or two before yelling based upon your assumed meaning of his sentences. I don't care how experienced you are or how anything you are - you need to have some respect for other people.

I don't feel he has said anything wrong. I understand there is a temptation to take pity on Andrew (and I am not saying he does not deserve it), but Ace, like me, has seen dozens of people who made excuses for testing positive, only to end up confessing or otherwise being proven guilty later. I am not implying this is Andrew's situation, but trust me, it gets tiresome listening to excuses by people who end up caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

 

[UltraQuiet]

I don't feel he has said anything wrong. I understand there is a temptation to take pity on Andrew (and I am not saying he does not deserve it), but Ace, like me, has seen dozens of people who made excuses for testing positive, only to end up confessing or otherwise being proven guilty later. I am not implying this is Andrew's situation, but trust me, it gets tiresome listening to excuses by people who end up caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

You can add me to that list. We are all a bit jaded in that the false positive claims never pan out. It gets even worse when another Chief or an Officer pops positive, claims that it was false and in the end they end up confessing. It's enough to make you doubt the veracity of anyone claims.


Chief

 

[tcsenter]

A. Say drug tests aren't perfect, strap on the chute, tell the rest of your team to do the same, and say "follow me" to the rest of your stick as you headed out the ramp of the C130, or

I would be more worried about the guy who is having family problems, or the guy for whom chute-packing has become mundane and automatic that his mind tends to wander while he is working. I would be more concerned with the guy's prior record of merit and service.

I'm not saying that positives should be ignored. There are other ways to monitor and deal with those testing positive. But heck, we send people to prison and death row on lesser confidence intervals than 99.998%, so what the hell.

tcsenter, I still find your "false positive" fact hard to believe. How is it that myself and the other Urinalysis testers I work with have never gotten a "false positive"?????

The error rates I gave were for non-specific errors. They may be either false positive or negative and are associated with a variety of causes from equipment contamination to cross-reactivity with other substances to variable body chemistry. The rest of the discussion is academic, once you get passed the fact that 99.998% doesn't equal 100%. You'd be hard pressed to find a biochemist who would be willing to bet his career and reputation on a higher confidence interval.

 

[Andrew111]

The actual urinalysis test might not have been wrong; they might of switched mine with someone who takes a codeine based prescription drug. They don't look at the prescription drugs a person takes unless they test positive I imagine. I'm not sure what happened, but their was a goof up somewhere.