Just off the A48 in east Cardiff sits a drab corrugated steel building in a nondescript business park. It does not look like a place of great consequence. But each day the work that takes place inside has potentially life-changing implications for hundreds of people.
Cansford’s work is testing hair and nails for drugs and alcohol. The lab carries out tests for workplaces as well as for sporting bodies investigating performance-enhancing drug use. The bulk of its clients, though, are family lawyers and social services.
The family courts are a rarely-reported corner of the justice system but in the last couple of years that has started to change due to a transparency pilot that has seen WalesOnline report on a range of cases. Family courts make high-stakes decisions such as whether a baby is to be removed from their biological parents. Test results can play an important role in those decisions.
Cansford invited us on a tour of its lab as part of the transparency scheme to shed more light on family courts. It comes as the testing industry is facing some unsettling questions. Still looming large is the Randox scandal of 2017 – when alleged tampering threw thousands of results into doubt – and only weeks ago there were new shockwaves as lawyers and campaigners called for an urgent review of hair strand drug-testing in the family courts.
Their letter claimed the processes used to interpret results are “vastly oversimplified and misleading” and pose a “significant risk of systematic racial bias”. It went on to warn, terrifyingly, that you are more likely to lose custody of your child off the back of drug test results if you are African, Afro-Caribbean, or Asian.
The experts at Cansford pushed back on some elements of the letter. But they told us the sector does need regulation and they voiced serious concerns over the reliability of some of their competitors. They also spoke about the oddities of their work including some people’s audacious tactics to prevent their substance use being exposed.
Hot tubs and bleached hair
Inside Cansford lab in Cardiff
(Image: John Myers)
The lab’s press officer Alex ushers us along a series of corridors, each with bare white walls, and into a spartan meeting room. Perhaps acknowledging the functional interior design Alex tells us she previously worked in a swanky business-to-business consultancy office replete with pool tables and is “much happier here”. Looks can be deceiving – financial accounts show Cansford made £3.86m in profit last year up from £2.47m the year before.
Cansford tests for a long list of substances ranging from Class As to hypnotic sedatives. The lab refers to each person who gives a sample as a “donor” but this might overstate their enthusiasm for the process. A shaven head is one of the many ways people try to get out of a test. Alex says one man recently went further by removing all body hair and turning up “completely smooth”. He ended up having his nails collected instead.
An indication of some people’s reluctance, says Alex, is the “huge” number of clicks that Cansford’s website gets on a page about ways people try to beat a drug test including use of a hot tub. It turns out that lots of swimming in a chlorinated pool is more likely than a hot tub to affect a hair sample but, even then, regular drug users would still test positive.
A very popular method is bleached hair, which managing director Kim Bagley tells us can affect the result. “Bleach opens up the hair shaft and could allow some of the drug to leak out,” she says. “We have had hair so bleached it has snapped in our hands.” Many people who have heavily bleached their hair don’t realise that Cansford can collect body hair or nails as a fallback.
Abbi Holloway, deputy lab manager at Cansford in Cardiff
(Image: John Myers)
Cansford also tests blood but it only holds traces of a substance for a month whereas hair and nails’ memories can stretch back more than six months. What if someone arrives with no hair or any overhanging nail and blood is not an option? Deputy lab manager Abbi Holloway says: “That would be one of those unfortunate circumstances where we wouldn’t be able to collect a sample. It’s not something that happens often. In a court case it would have been communicated to the donor not to cut their hair.” Ignoring that instruction does not tend to be looked upon favourably by the court.
Sometimes a donor comes to the lab of their own volition because they want peace of mind ahead of an involuntary test. They may even be back with Cansford for the test they’d been fearing. The unnerving prospect of a drug test can also spark some far-fetched queries. “Recently someone asked if a cocaine test could be affected because their client drinks a lot of full-fat Coke,” says Alex. “There hasn’t been cocaine in Coke since 1903.”
We move into the lab itself where a dozen or so people in white coats are at work. On an average day they will test 300 samples, all of which will come back within three days. Tubes swirl around various sophisticated-looking contraptions. But the hair-testing process starts in rather analogue fashion as demonstrated by one lab worker using a ruler and scissors to carefully cut strands of hair into 1cm segments. Most people’s hair grows by around 1cm a month so splitting it allows the lab to analyse a donor’s substance use month by month.
Inside Cansford lab in Cardiff
(Image: John Myers)
Abbi explains the lab can test for a drug by “spiking” a hair with the same substance. So is there a load of cocaine on the premises? “Well, in liquid form,” says Abbi. “We have a Home Office drug licence.” She is tight-lipped on the question of what a batch of controlled drugs might cost other than to say it “can be” expensive. How does the lab tell the difference between the drug it has added and the traces already present in the hair? Abbi says the added version is a different form of the drug, explaining: “It is the drug molecule with something added on to it making it a bit heavier.”
Donors rarely come into the lab for their test as Cansford has collection agents across the UK. Alex says: “We do have situations where people go awol from their home or their solicitor’s office to avoid the test.” Cansford demands that someone who knows the donor – for example a lawyer or social worker – attends to prevent a stand-in taking the donor’s place or an expensive wig of real human hair being used to fool the collector as has been attempted on occasions.
‘A lot of companies out there are not accredited’
The sector was left reeling in 2017 when allegations of data tampering hit the Randox forensics lab in Manchester, which had carried out testing for both criminal and family court cases. More than 10,000 criminal cases were said to be affected and as of 2018 the scandal had resulted in 41 criminal convictions being quashed and 50 drug-driving investigations dropped. The Guardian reported that there was also doubt over evidence used in “thousands of child protection proceedings”.
Then there was the recent open letter signed by 91 lawyers, academics, and campaigners calling for an urgent review of hair tests in the family courts. The letter points to a recent case in which Mr Justice Cobb concluded that another judge had been wrong to attach such weight to hair test results that led to three children being taken from their family. The advocates involved were criticised for only giving the judge a brief summary of the results and leaving out important parts of the expert report. Cansford then provided crucial test results that cast doubt on the original findings from a different lab.
The letter also calls for an end to “discriminatory” cut-off levels – the threshold at which a person is considered to have used drugs deliberately as opposed to, for instance, sharing a bed with a drug user. The concern is that darker hair absorbs a higher level of drugs and even within the subsection of black hair there are variations based on race. “You are more likely to lose custody of your child if you are African, Afro-Caribbean, or Asian based on drug testing alone than if you are blonde or red-haired,” according to experts quoted in the letter.
Inside Cansford lab in Cardiff
(Image: John Myers)
The letter warns there is a “significant” risk that many children will be wrongly removed from their families. When we raise the letter with people at Cansford they speak openly but ask their quotes to be attributed to an unnamed lab spokesperson. Asked if the letter’s concerns do apply to some labs they say: “Possibly yes and it really does depend on: does that company actually have a lab or are they interpreting results that have been sent to them and how are they interpreting those results?
“One thing we don’t do, because it’s not possible, is to equate a value you get to an amount of drug usage. There is one lab we know of that does do that. They might say a certain level equates to so many lines of a drug per week. But that’s not possible because there are so many considerations that need to be taken into account.”
However Cansford disagrees with the letter’s stance on cut-off levels. “Cuts-offs are actually there for some protection. You remove the cut-offs and you will have more positive cases. They are recommended by the Society of Hair Testing and they’re applied to rule out the possibility of things like environmental exposure to a drug. By removing the cut-offs you possibly open the door to more misinterpretation if people aren’t trained to interpret those results.”
Cansford says it takes into account factors like ethnicity and hair colour when interpreting results. “Everyone here who interprets results is taught how to write a report. You’ve got to be very careful because there are consequences for people’s livelihoods and possibly their lives. Interpretation is key and we need to make sure our clients understand what we’ve said. They need to understand they’re appointing an expert who can be called to court and present the evidence.”
The Randox scandal led to stricter quality control standards for a lab to achieve accreditation. But there is still no regulator for drug and alcohol testing in the family courts. “I think anyone with a reputable lab would welcome regulation,” says Ms Bagley. “There seem to be a lot of companies out there that are not accredited. You don’t have to be to be in this industry. We choose to be.”
Ms Bagley believes regulation would help separate Cansford from “the people who have a company and a telephone and claim to offer the same service”. Some companies ship out samples to overseas labs meaning they have lower overheads and can offer better testing prices for social services and other clients. “We do find it quite difficult,” says Ms Bagley. “You look at some labs’ websites and you’d swear blind it is a lab in the UK. The prices are lovely for the customer but you don’t have the same control going through that lab.”
Cansford, which has 45 staff, says its prices for a test can range from £65 to thousands of pounds. This depends on factors like the substances involved, the timeframe, and whether a witness statement is required.
After our visit the lab sent us a case study showing the impact its testing can have. A council had applied for an order to place two young children for adoption due to concerns over the parents’ ability to provide a stable home. Cansford said its hair tests indicated regular cannabis use by both parents and, in the mum’s case, “heavy” use of the drug over several months which “affected their ability to meet their children’s needs”. The lab added that its results played a “decisive role” in the court making care and placement orders for both children. They were placed together for adoption.
WalesOnline has been attending family court under a new transparency scheme. The parties involved are always kept anonymous in our coverage. If you are aware of an upcoming Cardiff family court case that you believe we should cover you can contact us at conor.gogarty@walesonline.co.uk.