Drug Testing Co. Site Offers Insights, Stats

By: Charles Bowen Drug testing now is as much a part of the job-seeker's world as resumes and recruitment interviews. And now a Boise, Idaho, company that has made its fortune by inviting strangers to urinate in a cup is sharing with the rest of us what it has learned so far about the drug culture.

Its quick and easy online database of drug information should be in the electronic toolbelt of any good police reporter. DrugShield Inc. has created the resource that lets you search a drug-related term, anything from a scientific name to a street term. The database then returns descriptions, physical symptoms of use, physiological and long-term effects and even withdrawal and overdose symptoms.

To check it out, visit http://www.drugshield.com/drug-dict.html, where a simple data-entry box invites you to enter a keyword or phrase. You can use full names or partial names, such as meth. The next screen provides links to all records that contain your search query. Click on a hyperlink in any reference to see the entire report.

The major reports on drugs (such as heroin and cocaine) provide details on derivation, history of abuse, medical descriptions and current statistics on North American use. Many reports also have information on physiological effects, physical symptoms of use, withdrawal symptoms, long-term use effects, overdose symptoms, street names, how the drug is usually administered and in what forms it usually appears.

The site also provides material for browsing. Click the "Drug Info" link at the upper right of any screen and select a topic from the drop-down menu. At this writing, the site has breakout articles about cocaine, ecstasy, GHB (the so-called "date rape drug"), heroin, LSD, marijuana, methamphetamine and mushrooms.

The site also has material online about narcotics testing. Click the navigation bar's "Products" option. A drop-down menu offers data on its own drug testing products, text on a policy for a drug-free workplace and information about employee and supervisor training. Also the site offers a free e-mail newsletter for those interested in following developments in this area. At the bottom of each page in the site is a "Join our mailing list" box.

Other online resources of interest:

1. For the federal government's spin on the latest language of narcotics, the Office of National Drug Control Policy has published Street Terms, a database with more than 2,000 terms that refer to specific drug types or drug activity. Reach it at http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/streetterms. You can jump directly to a slang term or search from the opposite direction by finding assorted slang terms currently in use for various narcotics. You also can search the word collection by usage and by drug culture.

2. For a broader view of reporting on contemporary drug cultures, check out Drugstory.org, a super portal developed by the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign that links to relevant Web sites and online articles about specific drugs and their effects. The site also offers journalists an opportunity to e-mail specific questions to experts on assorted drugs and related health and social topics.

3. And finally, for general information on medical terms, visit MedTerms.com which takes advantage of the dynamic Web medium to update the data as needed so it can reflect changes and additions to medical terminology. Even current jargon and medical "slang" is included, as well as pertinent scientific items, abbreviations, acronyms, institutions, projects, symptoms, syndromes, eponyms and medical histories.