Urine screening of arrestees as a source of drug abuse indicator data.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) recently sponsored a study which examined the utility of jail urine screening programs as a source of drug abuse indicator data. During the study, short-term urine screening programs were set up in the central jail facilities of four urban counties. To determine whether jail urine screening programs have the capacity to detect patterns of drug use not readily detectable through existing indicators, the urinalysis findings for each county were compared with data generated by the DAWN and CODAP systems. The results of the study suggest that jail urine screening programs can be useful as a supplement to existing sources of information on drug use patterns in local communities.