Police Drug Testing, Hair Analysis, and the Issue of Race Bias

Abstract

Poice agents have beg to use hair analysis as a drug-screening tool in both officer recruitment and officer monitoring. This has been controversial because of a putative racial bias associated with human hair specimens, especially focused on cocaine. However, little empirical evidence has been offered to substantiate this claim. To asses this issue, Hoffin (1999, p. 613) analyzed recruitment cohort data from a major metropolitan police department ( N - 1,80) for cocaine ad marijuana hair assays, contrasting recruits by race. Hoffman's conclusion, based on comparison of odds ratios and relative rates for positive assy outcomes, was that there was "no evidence that one group (i.e., race) was more adversely affected by hair testing compared to urine testing." This article reports on research seekig to replicate Hoffman's results concerning hair analysis by utilizing a similar analytic approach with a much larger data set ( N - 40,000) and examining a different major metropolitan police department. This research is disnct form the Hoffman study in two ways: The assessment was exclusively of cocaine prevalence, and the subjects were who job applicants but sworn police officers. The findings reported here support Hoffman's conclusion that there is no statically significant race bias attributable to hair analysis, at least as applied to cocaine.

Hair as a Biological Indicator of Drug Use, Drug Abuse or Chronic Exposure to Environmental Toxicants

“…Analysis of approximately 2,000 hair specimens for a number of drugs, including amphetamines did not support a color effect (Kelly 2000). In other studies, where side-by-side analyses of paired hair and urine specimens of the same individual were performed, was shown that the use of proper methodology provides no statistically significant hair color or hair type effects (Mieczkowski 2002;Cairns 2004b;Cairns 2004c). Consequently, although drugs could bind to melanin in hair, this does not really constitute a problem in hair analysis since, so far, it provides a statistical insignificant effect.…”

Assessing illicit drug use among adults with schizophrenia

“…Similar race effects have been found regarding concordance between self-reported drug use and hair assays (Ledgerwood, et al, 2008; Vignali et al, 2012). Such racial disparities may be attributable to over-detecting drug metabolites in African Americans’ hair (Borges et al, 2003; Cone and Joseph, 1996; Fendrich, et al, 2004; Han et al, 2011; Henderson et al, 1998; Kidwell et al, 2000; Kintz et al, 2000; Ledgerwood, et al, 2008; Welp, et al, 2003); however, findings are mixed (Hoffman, 1999; Kelly et al, 2000; Mieczkowski, 2011; Mieczkowski et al, 2002; Mieczkowski and Newel, 2000), and no data have been presented for adults with schizophrenia.…”

Cops and drugs: Illicit drug abuse by police personnel

“…Other similar studies also had quite low rates of positive tests. On average, 0,28-0,3 of the total sample showed marihuana or cocaine use (Lersch & Mieczkowski, 2005;Mieczkowski, 2004;Mieczkowski, Lersch & Kruger, 2002). Hoffman (1999) found, however, 1,5% (n=20) of males were positive for cannabis, and 1,2% (n=16) for cocaine.…”