By Marina Esplin-Jones In light of recent proposals for drug testing in the sporting world, the workplace and in schools, The Royal Gazette visited the only lab on the Island equipped to carry out urine screening and confirmation testing for the presence of illegal substances. We hope our tour of the high-security central lab will give the public a better understanding of what drug testing is all about.

*** Cannabinoids, opiates, benzoylecgonine...enter the high-tech world of drug testing.

Automatic turntable machines, solvents, gas chromatographs, mass selective detectors...and that's just the beginning.

If you thought drug testing simply involved a urine sample, a couple of test tubes, some chemicals and a white-coated lab technician to record a positive or negative reading, think again.

Think in the region of $200,000 worth of state-of-the-art equipment. "Very few people understand what the term drug testing means,'' acting chief medical officer Dr. Brenda Davison says. "The ignorance about what goes on goes right up to the top.'' A sample of urine to be screened for the presence of drugs will arrive at Central Lab with a security seal around it and baring an identification number.

The three staff within the high-security lab carry out all public health testing, illegal drug analysis and other forensic science testing.

Urine testing for drugs was started relatively recently, in 1978, senior Government analyst Dr. Alan Young notes.

And, there being more than 200 illegal drugs on the Misuse of Drugs Act, it is restricted to the drugs of choice in Bermuda: cannabis, cocaine, heroin and, of course, alcohol.

Once the sample of urine, in the familiar glass or plastic jar, arrives at Central Lab, it is transported past shelves of bottles containing chemical potions and computer-locked fridges to Stage One: The Initial Screening Stage.

There, a smaller sample is taken from the main sample and put in a small tube and into an automatic turntable machine connected to a computer.

It is moved around with a batch of 15 other samples.

A mechanical needle dips into it several times, draws a drop each time and places it in another microtube where it is tested with re-agents for the presence of alcohol, cannabis, cocaine and heroin, washing itself each time.

The results of each test are spat out by number on a paper print out and fed into the attached computer. A test could read something like this: Cannabinoids -- POS, Opiates (heroin) NEG, Benzoylegonine (cocaine) POS.

Central Lab conducts around 6,000 urine tests a year for drug rehab centres and for companies and institutions with pre-employment testing and random and cause drug testing policies in place, Belco being the most recent to follow the trend aimed at combating the ills of drug abuse in the community.

"If it's negative at the first stage, the urine is no longer of any interest to us,'' Dr. Young says.

However, just because the urine sample shows negative to weed, coke, heroin or alcohol, doesn't mean the person it belongs to does not do drugs. Drugs have a two-to-three-day life in the body. Traces of cannabis can remain in the system up to a month.

"A negative urine does not tell you a great deal, but from the point of view of urine testing that's the end of it,'' he says.

But if it's a positive result, it's on to Stage Two: Confirmation Testing. And that can take one of his staff an entire day to complete.

"It's very labour intensive. We do it on average just once a week,'' Dr.

Young says.

However, confirmation testing is vital if it involves any sort of punitive action by the person's employer. "It's dangerous to do only half the service,'' he says.

Although there is another lab that conducts initial urine screenings, Central Lab is the only lab on the Island that offers the full test, which means a second "confirmation'' test by a different method.

Labs can send urine samples away for second tests, but this can be unreliable due to the changes of hands the sample will goes through, Dr. Young notes.

The 150-200 urine samples received each week from Addiction Services are not confirmation tested unless the person demands it in the event they know they haven't been smoking drugs, he points out.

A second test in the event of a positive result is necessary in other cases, he says, because, for example, some compounds in cough medicine have opiate-like structures and substances such as codeine will give a positive result for opiates.

"You need to find out what compound you have actually found,'' Dr. Young says.

Stage Two involves taking a fresh sample of urine from the existing sample and a completely different, highly complex method of testing.

The fresh sample is absorbed onto silica (a filter substance), washed free of impurities and then extracted with a small volume of a suitable solvent.

The unknown urine is run against controls to allow interpretation of the results -- it enables one to exclude such excuses as second-hand cannabis smoke, Dr. Young notes.

From this stage, the sample goes to the $120,000 Gas Chromatograph confirmation machine, which Dr. Young says, is "basically a very expensive oven.'' It is injected into a stream of helium that is passed through a very narrow bore-glass column and separated as the temperature slowly rises from 180 degrees to 290 degrees celcius. It then goes into the mass selective detector and a graphic pattern is recorded on an attached computer. "The data generated allows identification of the drug or metabolite and amount present,'' Dr. Young notes.

Certain drugs produce certain patterns.

From there, a report is made and the bad news -- or good news is sent to the giver of the urine sample.

STAGE ONE -- Senior Government analyst Dr. Alan Young, the man in charge of testing urine samples for the presence of drugs, holds up a just-arrived security-sealed urine sample, identified only by a number.

FINAL STAGE -- Dr. Alan Young sits by his "very expensive oven'', which, by a complex process, will determine if a positive urine drug-test result is really a positive.