What does navy drug test for

Knowing how to effectively advocate in this situation is the difference between facing an adverse separation and maintaining your career. Depending on the branch of service, recruits who test positive for drugs may be able to reapply 90 days after their previous test. However, should you fail the second test, you can be barred from serving in any branch of the military going forward.

For active-duty service members, they are not given that second opportunity. If they do test positive, administrative and disciplinary action will be forthcoming. Depending on which type of drug returned a positive result, the consequences could be more serious.

Throughout much of this process, service members may not be assigned a free military defense counsel until it's too late. Nevertheless, a failed drug test does not mean it's over. You often hear about the "zero tolerance" and how compliance is mandatory. However, it is mandatory processing, not mandatory separation. There are many ways to challenge these allegedly positive tests. You can challenge the way the sample is collected, the way it was handled, and the way it was tested.

The collection process is detailed, and the testing procedure is scientific. Answered July 3, Describe the drug test process at U. Navy, if there is one Asked February 25, Answered February 25, Answer See 5 answers.

Does U. Navy have a drug test policy? Asked February 10, Answered February 10, Tips to get helpful answers Check that your question hasn't already been asked Ask a direct question Check your spelling and grammar. There are a few ways for how to fight a positive drug test in the military. One way is to prove that the service member unknowingly ingested the drug.

If a test comes back positive, the government must have more evidence than just that urinalysis was positive. They must be able to prove that the reason for the positive result was because the individual consciously ingested an illegal substance. The DoD provides very detailed and specific instructions for how test administers should conduct and handle each screening.

Any deviation from these instructions, no matter how slight, can cast doubt on the accuracy of the results. He will comb through each record and document to ensure that every instruction was properly met. If there is a chance that errors got made in the collection, testing, or handling of your urine sample, our military drug crime attorney will find them. There are several protections that the military takes to ensure the test results are accurate.

To start, each individual must write their initials on the label of their own bottle. There is also someone present to observe the service member while they urinate into their bottle to ensure they do not try to cheat. The bottles are then boxed into batches, and the person responsible for administering the test will begin a chain-of-custody document for each batch. This may be anyone from the observer to the person who puts the bottle in the box as well as the person who takes it out.

Essentially, the document provides a written record of anyone at all who had direct contact with the urine sample at any time.

The document also applies to anyone who handles the sample in the lab. The names of each person and what they did to the sample must appear in this document to ensure its accuracy. If you are an active service member, you are not able to retake a failed drug test. Drug detection windows are extremely important for reservists, because reservists may not be convicted at a court-martial unless the drug use occurred while on federal duty.

Depending on your military branch, if you receive a positive drug test result, you may be subject to the following consequences:. The most common defense in drug cases is that the service member did not knowingly ingest the substance in question.

If you were to review Article a , UCMJ, you would notice that the use of an illegal drug is only prohibited when the use is wrongful. Using drugs is not wrongful when the service member lacks knowledge of the contraband nature of the drug. The government has written the following language into the law to make it easier to prosecute cases based on urinalysis tests. Because of that language, defense counsel must have the skills to make the government expert toxicologist concede on cross-examination that an expert cannot tell from a urinalysis test whether a person knowingly ingested the banned substance.

This requires proof that the drug samples were mishandled. There have been examples over the years of collection personnel mislabeling samples, mishandling samples, or even making mistakes with personal identifying information. We can sometimes have samples retested.

A legal consultation is advisable where there is a question as to whether the command had probable cause to conduct the drug testing in the first instance. There are a number of different circumstances where commands can engage in subterfuge to conduct criminal searches or drug testing. Defense counsel should aggressively protect your constitutional rights. The nature of the drug test is also important because some tests only have limited uses.

Defense counsel must be vigilant in those cases because limited use drug tests must ordinarily result in an honorable discharge.

You must be wary of command-directed tests.