ABSTRACT
During the past several years, analysis of urine for metabolites of drugs of abuse has received a tremendous amount of attention. There have been symposia and workshops devoted to this subject at all of the recent major meetings in clinical laboratory science in the USA as well as at international congresses. Drug abuse became a problem of great magnitude in the United States in the so-called heroin epidemic of the sixties. Most of the methodologies of analysis in detection of drugs of abuse in urine rely on chromatography for one or another step in the procedure. There are certain spots in chromatograms which take some experience to interpret, and those charged with the analysis must be familiar with the spots which may occur from random urine specimens and be unrelated to drug metabolites. There are controls for urine analysis for metabolites of drugs of abuse. These are usually lyophilized urine specimens containing morphine, amphetamines, and/or barbiturates.
