Combatting the rising rate of people driving under influence as well as the misuse of substances like marijuana has led to people and government agencies looking for new and faster methods to perform drug tests, which brought about the use of saliva drug tests. We know that more than half the states of the United States have legalized the use of marijuana for mainly medical purposes, but the point is the major reasons for testing for drug abuse have led to the need for faster means of drug testing which is the mouth swab test.

However, the reliability of the saliva tests to detect the presence of marijuana is still questionable and unreliable. A review of fifteen separate oral points of collection drug testing devices showed ten of these oral samples detecting the presence of THC while the other five detected false positive results which is one reason to understand that this test is unreliable.

One other major reason why the saliva test is unreliable is the fact that when marijuana is consumed, an immediate side effect it has on the body is that it immediately dries the mouth, (something that most people who consume marijuana can attest to) leaving little or no saliva available in the mouth. At the time of testing, the saliva glands in the mouth would need to produce new saliva, which is something that would make the results questionable.

The essence of the saliva drug test does not help with long term testing of the availability of marijuana in the body because it only helps test for the presence of marijuana in the body within the time frame of 12 hours or less. When it comes to people who have been consuming it over time, it really is not so effective. Urine tests can help detect the consumption of marijuana over days (probably 7 days or more) which is something saliva tests cannot detect.

Majority of companies in major sectors of industry like the construction, transportation, and building sectors make it a priority for all staffs to pass mouth swab tests to preserve the validity of the workplace and make sure the working environment is safe, but the point so far is that it has done more harm than good with many individuals attesting to the fact that they were falsely accused of working under influence. With the use of other means of testing, some of these issues were cleared while others were not, pointing to the fact that the saliva drug testing method is not yet fit to serve the general public just yet.

The main point of this article is to first of all basically make us understand that saliva tests are not the A game when it comes to testing for the availability of marijuana in the system. We are not totally disregarding the prospects of what it can become because it is still a work in progress and can become more effective over time, but not just at the moment.