Schools and parents are calling on doctors to test children for drug use, but many physicians are not qualified to do so, the New York Times reported Feb. 14.

Researchers led by Sharon Levy of Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital Boston surveyed 359 doctors who regularly treat adolescents and found that many lacked basic knowledge about drug testing, including how to ensure accuracy and the limitations of the tests.

Of the doctors surveyed, only 23 percent properly collected urine samples, and just 7 percent checked the samples for tampering. Many doctors were unaware that some foods could cause false positive results, and did not realize that common drug tests don't yield results for drugs like Ecstasy, Oxycontin, and the inhalant nitrous oxide.

"I think that a lot of physicians really see drug testing as a fairly simple lab test when, in fact, it is not at all," said Levy. "Physicians and parents may be falsely reassured that their child is not using a particular drug when the child never underwent proper testing for it."

The research appears in the February 2006 issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.