It is evident that administrative and disciplinary sanctions for institutional drug use set forth by CSC policy disrupt positive community contact, hamper employment training, and stifle positive progress toward reintegration because of transfers to different institutions. In the community, sanctions that return an individual to prison for cannabis use, can be traumatic and counter productive to the objective to help prisoners reintegrate, by removing them from their jobs and interrupting efforts to develop positive community contacts. Without a change in the practice that guides community tests for THC, normally responsible cannabis users will continue to be returned to institutions despite positive efforts toward reintegration. The result of these sanctions may lead some prisoners to switch from using soft drugs to hard drugs while incarcerated because of random urinalysis testing, which will be discussed in the next section.

THE SWITCH FROM SOFT TO HARD DRUGS

Central to any discussion on the potential harms created by CSC’s urinalysis program is the idea that some prisoners may be switching from cannabis to harder drugs, like heroin, to avoid detection via random urinalysis testing. According to MacPherson (2001:54), “Evidence of opiate use will remain detectable in urine for only 1-2 days, while THC, the active ingredient in marijuana and hashish, can be detected for as long as 5 weeks after chronic use.”⁵ CSC data indicates that the majority of random urine tests happen during the week, which leaves a three-day window for heroin use without detection (Friday evening to Monday morning). Given these conditions, it is probable that some prisoners may choose to use opiates rather than cannabis in order to avoid detection on urinalysis tests. In fact, it has been reported to this author that drug dealers in institutions often use the existence of urinalysis testing to sell heroin to a first time buyer inside. In these cases, heroin is sold under the premise that “they don’t test on the weekends…it’ll be out of your system by Monday.”

There have been a few studies that have attempted to verify that some prisoners are making a switch from soft to hard drugs both in Canada and the UK. Jürgens conducted a survey of drug use perceptions on prisoners in the Matsqui Institution (Pacific Region, Medium Security) in 1996. They found that 42% of prisoners felt others had not switched less detectable but generally more addictive drugs, 30% were undecided and a significant 28% felt prisoners were switching to avoid detection (Jürgens 1996, 1998). Jürgens writes:

We agree that urinalysis testing is encouraging some inmates to change their drug of choice from marijuana and hashish to harder drugs like cocaine and heroin because they are flushed out of your system faster, thus making random detection much harder. There is also a good portion of inmates that really do not care and will take their chance with random testing. In my opinion, this strategy is not reducing the amount of drugs in prison, instead, it is increasing the amount of hard drugs available (Jürgens 1996:4).

At the onset of instituting mandatory drug testing in the UK prison system, researchers conducted a study to assess the impact of drug testing programs on drug use in prison. In their study, 30 of 111 prisoners reported they had stopped using drugs completely, 17 reported to have reduced their consumption, 7 reported they were smoking less cannabis but continuing to use heroin and 4 prisoners had switched to heroin as their drug of choice, and cut down on their cannabis use in response to urinalysis the remainder in the survey indicated no change in their drug use patterns (Edgar and O’Donnell 1998). They also found that 1 in 5 prisoners in their survey had been introduced to heroin for the first time while in prison. Significantly, their study determined that the ability of random urinalysis testing to accurately assess institutional drug use was suspect. In addition, 17 of the 111 inmates (who were also randomly tested) indicated they had used cannabis or heroin in the last month and had evaded detection on random screening tests.

⁵ The inclusion of the words “chronic use” are significant here. It is well documented that THC is cleared from the body much quicker in infrequent users than in chronic or regular users. The detection time for cannabis use ranges from 3 to 30+ days depending upon factors such as the THC content of the drug, the metabolic rate of the user, the intake of fluids, and the frequency of use.