Why are the Olympics Still Using Urine Alcohol Testing?

Twenty-four of the 2004 Olympic athletes were either thrown out for doping violations before they competed or stripped of their medals after they competed. That is the biggest number of violators of any previous Olympic games. If the Olympic committee is finding more and more performance enhancing drugs in athletes, and those being the ones they have caught using the current system isn’t it time for a change?

Drug Follicle Hair Screening

The latest and most accurate alcohol detection drug service testing is drug and hair alcohol testing using drug follicle hair testing. Developed by a group of German and English scientists, there is no other test quite like it. The ability to test people weeks and even months after they have abused drugs or alcohol can be found using this new drug follicle hair screening. The test is non-evasive, cost effective and considered valid under European and American courts.

A certified nurse will collect the small hair sample, taken from the base of the scalp and take or send the hair sample to a lab for testing. Once in the lab, certified professionals will perform a series of evaluations and different tests to look for special markers in the hair that only show up when there is alcohol or drugs in the bloodstream, the more markers are present, the more alcohol or drugs are consumed. As the hair grows, it absorbs special markers called fatty acid ethyl esters (FAEE’s) and ethyl glucuronide (EtG) into its structure, which remain in the hair indefinitely. The more markers there are the more alcohol or drugs one has consumed. In conjunction with the urine alcohol testing just before or just after an athlete has performed would be the EtG alcohol testing and drug follicle hair screening. With the EtG test, abuse can be segmented into months, whereas urinalysis can only prove accurate levels of abuse within hours and at the very most, a week with diluted results.

As for using this method for testing strictly alcohol abuse, urine alcohol testing can’t detect accurate results for the reason that alcohol leaves the body in hours and minutes alone and makes it extremely difficult to judge how much a person has consumed and how long ago it was that the person consumed it. Therefore, hair alcohol testing is great because it shows a history of abuse, or lack of abuse going back weeks and months instead of hours. Alcohol hair testing may not be as important of an issue for the Olympics’ as testing performance enhancing drugs, using drug follicle hair testing, but knowing the background history of the testers or judges themselves is very important. One thing is for sure; we cannot promote or tolerate drug use in the Olympics or in any athletics for that matter. If we are determined to forbid cheating academically, we should be determined to forbid cheating in something as prestigious as the Olympic Games. With more reliable and accurate drug and hair alcohol testing technology, it would be insulting to the contenders who work so incredibly hard to win gold medals without performance enhancing drugs to let a cheater squeak through because the Olympic committee is still relying on the older technology testing.