Some people in this world are always looking for a loophole. When you’re a lawyer, this can be a valuable talent. When you need to take a drug test, though, what you think is a loophole may really be a snare.

Increasingly, when courts and employers ask subjects to complete a drug test, the method they prefer is the hair follicle test. This features a detection window of about 90 days. Test subjects wary of false positives or even true positives can be quite inventive in trying to find a loophole to the test’s requirements. Some will use special “detoxifying” shampoos that purport to remove all traces of drug metabolites from the hair. They don’t work. Others will even go so far as to shave their heads and bodies to leave the lab with no hair to test. Another common but misled method is to bleach or dye one’s hair in hopes of throwing off testers. But can hair dye throw off a hair follicle test? It can’t, and here’s why.

Don’t Go Dark

It may occur to you to cover up your hair, so to speak, with jet-black hair dye. Because it’s the darkest and richest hair color, it should cover up any residual evidence of drug use in theory. Unfortunately for would-be loophole-seekers, it doesn’t work this way. The presence of hair dye doesn’t affect the presence of metabolites that lie deep within the strand. Even with your lovely new hair color, laboratories will be able to detect the presence of numerous illegal and commonly abused drugs within a hair sample.

Bleaching Can’t Do It All

Some test subjects may try to move in the other direction—bleaching their hair blonde. After all, a powerful solvent should be able to remove metabolites, right? Yes and no. Bleaching damages the hair shaft, and in doing that damage, the metabolites in the hair can leach out. This might diminish levels but not make you pass your drug test.

What Would Happen if I Tried?

If you must take a 17-panel drug test that calls for a hair sample, be honest. Simply submit your hair sample without attempting to determine whether hair dye can throw off a hair follicle test. If you should try to bleach your hair so extensively as to render your hair sample unusable, you will not pass the test on the technicality of having an insufficient sample. Instead, you may need to give your body hair, which is a far more invasive request than asking for hair from your head. You may also have to take a fingernail test, which measures the presence of metabolites within keratin. The worst-case scenario is simply that your skullduggery causes you to fail the test altogether, leaving you with bleached blonde hair and the blemish of a failed drug test.

For more information on sample collection hours and drug testing, simply call us at (877) 731-6377.