Evading Drug Tests in Michigan; also Pot.
Location: US, Detroit/Chicago area
Time Period: Fairly recent (within past 5 years)
I have a character who graduated from Western Michigan University and, after applying to a bunch of jobs in the Detroit and Chicago area, went on to become an economics teacher at a high school in inner-city Detroit. He's really a nice guy (if a bit of an alcoholic), but during college he was a tremendous pot-head.
I know that drug testing is required for a lot of jobs, and I know that my cousin got accused of being a druggie when he went to do a drug test for his HR job because his hair wasn't long enough for the type of test they do. My character has long, long hair, and three years after he gets this job his hair is far down his back (and he's 6'7"). Basically, this means that even though he stopped smoking over a year before he graduated, he might not have been able to hack off and grow out enough hair to have his hair free of residual marijuana by-products for the interview and still be the right length in the current setting. I found out that shoulder-length hair carries about two years of info, so he's definitely got his two years of heavy use from chin to upper back. I'm guessing that if he cut his hair for the job interviews, he probably went for a ponytail down to the upper back (his hair is uncontrollably curly if there isn't any length on it, and he decided that showing up with a neat ponytail would be better than an outrageous, unintentional 'fro).
How could he have handled getting this job if he was required to do a hair test? How would an employer respond if he said straight-up before the drug test that he had been doing marijuana during his earlier college years but had stopped? Are there provisions for self-reform?
Also, I'd like a few personal experiences with marijuana (both smoked and in brownie form). What does it taste like? What's the sensation? What goes into making a really good pot brownie? I'd do my own field research, but when I was in Amsterdam I discovered that pot is one of my migraine triggers. :)
Googled: "drug testing", "hair-based drug testing", "detroit public schools employee drug testing", "toklas brownies" (Wikipedia has some pretty good instructions on how he'd do it, I'd just like to know what makes them 'good')
Time Period: Fairly recent (within past 5 years)
I have a character who graduated from Western Michigan University and, after applying to a bunch of jobs in the Detroit and Chicago area, went on to become an economics teacher at a high school in inner-city Detroit. He's really a nice guy (if a bit of an alcoholic), but during college he was a tremendous pot-head.
I know that drug testing is required for a lot of jobs, and I know that my cousin got accused of being a druggie when he went to do a drug test for his HR job because his hair wasn't long enough for the type of test they do. My character has long, long hair, and three years after he gets this job his hair is far down his back (and he's 6'7"). Basically, this means that even though he stopped smoking over a year before he graduated, he might not have been able to hack off and grow out enough hair to have his hair free of residual marijuana by-products for the interview and still be the right length in the current setting. I found out that shoulder-length hair carries about two years of info, so he's definitely got his two years of heavy use from chin to upper back. I'm guessing that if he cut his hair for the job interviews, he probably went for a ponytail down to the upper back (his hair is uncontrollably curly if there isn't any length on it, and he decided that showing up with a neat ponytail would be better than an outrageous, unintentional 'fro).
How could he have handled getting this job if he was required to do a hair test? How would an employer respond if he said straight-up before the drug test that he had been doing marijuana during his earlier college years but had stopped? Are there provisions for self-reform?
Also, I'd like a few personal experiences with marijuana (both smoked and in brownie form). What does it taste like? What's the sensation? What goes into making a really good pot brownie? I'd do my own field research, but when I was in Amsterdam I discovered that pot is one of my migraine triggers. :)
Googled: "drug testing", "hair-based drug testing", "detroit public schools employee drug testing", "toklas brownies" (Wikipedia has some pretty good instructions on how he'd do it, I'd just like to know what makes them 'good')