She did tell them that she was taking adderall. I just wanted to know if this particular medication could result in a false positive.
Yes, there could be something I don't know about but, you can bet I will get to the bottom of this without mwarren1980's self righteous remarks. Thanks.
I went to MedMD and they suggested she contact an attorney. She plans on doing that so, I have to believe at this point she is innocent.
Thanks for the advice regarding a private test, excellent idea!
Mwarren is pretty much on the ball on this one. Yes, false positives are possible with hair follicle testing....but not likely. There was nothing self-righteous in mwarren's post - it was simply telling the truth.
As someone else mentioned earlier the vast majority of labs these days use a two-tier method of testing - the first is the common screening test we're all familiar with. These are the ones with the higher and more frequent false positives. If the sample is positive that's when the confirmation test is done using mass spectrometry. It's infinitely more precise (and quite a bit more expensive too but that's not the point). And what follows is the part that isn't going to go down well when I hit "post".
The general consensus is that
false positive samples from the screening test will - in virtually every case - be negative on the confirmation test. Urine tests are obviously more likely to give a false positive but even they will generally
not test positive in the confirmation test; once we get down to hair follicle testing it is even less likely that a clean sample will give a false positive
twice (I'm not a gambling woman, but think of the odds).
(if anyone is interested there's a good reason for this - since hair grows at a rate of about 1/2 an inch per month - and about an inch and a half is needed for testing - cocaine would generally needed to have been used at least 3 times within a 3-month time frame for a positive confirmation result. )
OP, by all means have another test performed. But please also bear in mind that though it's not impossible, a false positive hair follicle confirmation test is extremely unlikely. And if the second round of testing is positive? Unfortunately that speaks for itself.