Urine Drug Tests for Methamphetamine Show Increasing Use

Abstract

We performed 807,535 comprehensive urine drug tests on urine specimens submitted by pain, rehabilitation, internal medicine, and behavioral clinics. The data for positive urine methamphetamine results was extracted. The percentage of methamphetamine per total specimen volume per month was obtained, From April 1, 2016 to October 2016 this value was a little less than 4%, and increased to nearly 6% by April 2018. Methamphetamine is a rarely prescribed drug; thus, these results predominantly indicate illicit drug use. The increase in the percent of specimens with methamphetamine corresponds with the increase in hospitalizations in the time frame set out by Winkelman et al. Our data shows a continued increase up to August 2018 which agrees with the recent release of Overdose Death Rates from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)