Home CBD Will CBD Show Up on a Hair Follicle Test?

Will CBD Show Up on a Hair Follicle Test?

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CBD oils are made from marijuana and can result in a positive drug test, which can have serious repercussions. Will CBD show up on a hair follicle test?

With the legality of marijuana still in the air, drug testing is on the rise in the United States. Many companies are using it routinely to test their employees, but law enforcement agencies also conduct it on suspects in various cases.

With so much at stake, it is no wonder people are very cautious about using not only marijuana but CBD oils as well.

Hair Follicle Drug Test

As drug tests were becoming prevalent, so made the efforts to cheat them. To detect drugs in the human body, new tests were invented, and one of the most popular ones is the hair follicle test. Blood or urine tests can detect traces of drugs up to several days after use at best. A hair follicle test can detect if a person was consuming drugs up to 90 days before the testing. This has made it a common choice when it comes to workplace drug testing.

Companies could now reduce the numbers of the test they conduct and only do it several times a year. One drawback of the hair follicle test is that it can take up to seven days of traces of THC to show up in hair, while it appears almost instantly in a urine test. That is why it can’t be used to prove current impairment.

However, there were several studies recently claiming that hair follicle testing isn’t as accurate as advertised. In one, done in the United Kingdom in 2016 on a sample of 3,643 participants, it was concluded that the hair follicle test was more likely to result in both false positive and false negative than correct results. As such, it is deemed as an unreliable method of detecting substance use.

Another one from 2015 conclusively proved that “finding cannabinoids in hair does not prove cannabis consumption” since the test will give positive results even for people who were handling cannabis material.

Still, its unreliability hasn’t affected how wide-spread it is, and many employers consider the test results as final.

Be sure to also check out “Will CBD Oil Make Me Fail My Drug Test?” to see more info on different kinds of drug tests conducted.

CBD Hair Follicle Test

Most CBD oils contain 0.3% or less of THC, which is a minuscule amount, and it won’t get you high. It is hard to detect even for heavy users, let alone for people who only use CBD sporadically. Still, the risk exists, especially with so much on the line.

People have been tested positive after using CBD products, although rarely, and risking your livelihood hardly seems justified. Therefore, it may be best to stick with certified zero THC CBD products, but even that may not be a fool-proof strategy, as you will see below. Even certified products can contain traces of THC, often not enough to show up on a test, but still present in your organism.

Until the regulations on CBD and marijuana, in general, are brought up to date, nobody can guarantee you that what says on the box is accurate. The best course is to use only products from companies you trust.

Bear in mind that, similar to sex, the only 100% effective approach is abstention, especially if you know that you will be tested sometimes in the next three months.

New to taking CBD? Check out “CBD Dosage for Beginners (Science-Backed Facts)” for our guide to CBD dosage and ways to take it.

What to Do if You Test Positive in the CBD Hair Follicle Test?

THC is just one of 113 cannabinoids present in cannabis, any of which can be found even in Zero THC CBD oils. Their presence can confuse the test and result in a false-positive finding. Depending on your company’s policy, this can easily mean you can lose your job just because the test is faulty.

You can try explaining your situation, but in many large companies, a positive result is a ground for immediate dismissal. One solution is to request another test, a blood or urine one, to clear you.