My Drug Test came back Positive . . .
Random drug testing is a way of life in the military, and hundreds of thousands of tests are run at Department of Defense certified labs every year. When a test returns with positive results for a controlled substance, an entire cascade of negative events occurs, including:
- Removal from your job and placement in a separate unit;
- Revocation of your security clearances
- Investigation into your conduct.
- Withholding of Promotion
- Adverse Fitness Reports or Performance
- Adverse Administrative Separation
- Preferral of Charges, and Nonjudicial punishment, or Courts-Martial
A positive result from a urinalysis has the ability to put your entire military service in jeopardy.
The Command Says they have me Dead to Rights
The DOD drug program is based on a legally permissible “inference” that, if an illegal drug is found in your system above a certain pre-established level, then you knowingly used that drug. It does not require any evidence of you actually taking the drug. The tests cannot show how the drug was taken—whether by eating, drinking, injecting, inhaling or absorption—or where it was taken. The tests only show the level of the drug in one’s body or system at the time of the test, and cannot determine how long ago the use occurred.
And rarely does the command investigate any further into what you were doing in the three or four days before the drug test occurred.
Is there Anything I can do?
Drug tests can be challenged on a number of grounds, and experience indicates that all is not lost when a positive test occurs. The collection of a urine sample involves fallible individuals, frequently in an environment where dozens if not hundreds of other service members are providing samples. Chains of custody of the sample are significant, and a break can create the possibility of real doubt in a case. The laboratory testing programs have had had histories of inaccurate results, and the testing itself provides only a narrow slice of information itself—that is, the level of drugs at a single moment in time—without any context.
A number of defenses are available. Evidence of your actions on the days leading up to the event, the absence of evidence showing a knowing use, and a strong presentation of your good military character may be sufficient to cause a trier of fact to find reasonable doubt.
Also, in today’s environment of expanding services, high attrition, and the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the possibility for diversions from a disciplinary forum remains.
I can help you through this challenge.
Contact me. Now. |