Saliva is the name of the sticky fluid which is present in the mouth of the human body. This is released from the three salivary glands present in the mouth. On an average for a day a human being releases 1000 milliliters of saliva. Now-a-days, this human saliva is often termed as the oral fluid.
Many people are using the drugs in an illegal way. One can detect the presence of the drug by using five testing methods which are commonly used. The testing methods which are used for finding the usage or addiction are Urine drug test, Blood Drug test, Hair drug test, Sweat Drug test and Saliva drug test.
Many organizations are preferring this saliva drug or oral fluid drug test because of the advantages. Some of the main advantages like adulteration cannot be done using this, privacy is not needed, cost of the test when compared to hair/blood test is less and simplicity. All these make the Saliva drug testing more usable. But apart from the advantages, there is a drawback that this test cannot detect the previous history of the drug abuse.
Working of Saliva Drug test:
- Scrub is used for detecting the presence of the drug. Scrub looks almost like the tooth brush, but instead of bristles a swab will be used for detecting the drug.
- The swab is placed between the lower cheeks and the gums for about two minutes.
- Once the swab absorbs saliva, then it becomes completely wet and then it is put into the vial.
- Then it should be sent to the laboratory for the results.
- Now-a-days even home drug kits are available which can directly detect the presence of drug without sending them to the laboratory.
Thus, this is how the saliva drug test kit works for detecting the presence of drug.