Persons arrested for Driving Under the Influence (DUI) of drugs must submit to a chemical test. The two chemical tests available are blood or urine testing. Urine testing has a range of legal problems in that urine tests are widely considered the least reliable type of testing.

California law regulates the manner of how urine tests must be administered. The law requires that law enforcement personnel provide for sufficient privacy to maintain dignity while still ensuring the accuracy of the urine sample along with other technical requirements.  Due to the strict guidelines, urine analysis results are often inaccurate.

When a person is arrested for driving under the influence of drugs, law enforcement personnel may use the urine test to prove intoxication.  However, urine tests are many times proven unreliable primarily due to the fact that they cannot determine when a drug was used.  The reason is that the urine analysis only detects metabolites (traces of previously ingested drugs) rather than the actual drug itself.  Therefore, depending on the drug, it is difficult to determine whether the drug was present in person’s system at the time of driving.