Cigarette smoking is a very serious issue in the US as it costs an annual economic loss of $157 billion. The increase exposure to the carcinogens of the tobacco smoke has made it an important reason for lung cancer. Further, second hand tobacco smoking is equally dangerous as the burnt tobacco has more carcinogens. So a cigarette drug test is done among the employees as a random drug testing as well as a part of pre employment screening because even if the employees do not smoke, their close associates can introduce nicotine in to them as ETS or environmental tobacco smoke.
Cigarette smoke test is important not only for employment purposes but also very small but sensitive issues. If the pregnant women is a smoker, then the fetus suffers from fetal hypoxia that result in low birth weight, prematurity, increased incidence of spontaneous abortion and serious complications at the time of delivery like premature rupture of membranes, placenta previa and abruptio placentae. In case of young children exposed to high amounts of tobacco smoke, they suffer from increase incidence of respiratory and ear infections and the exacerbation of asthma.
A cigarette test must be mandatory as smokers have high rates of accidental injuries, and act as a vector for the transportation of hazardous agents into the lungs such as the radon gas in miners. It also exacerbates the occupational related respiratory disorders like bronchitis.
The nicotine is metabolized to cotinine which has a half life of 20 hours. This cotinine is excreted in blood saliva and urine. Cotinine blood test produces positive results even after 1 week of cessation of smoking. If you are seriously interested in quitting the smoking habit and want to monitor it, then you can have a regular cotinine drug test done.
The error rate associated with cotinine saliva test is low compared to the other methods of testing. The reason for doing a drug testing for tobacco is that many of the people do not give a proper account of their smoking history. They may say that they smoke only 3 cigarettes a day, but their cotinine levels in saliva would not co relate with the statement. But sometimes this type of error occurs due to bacterial contamination. The sample of saliva or urine sometimes when left unprotected would lead to further metabolism of cotinine leading to erroneous results.