Past studies have shown that those individuals placed under criminal justice supervision many times underreported their recent use of illicit drugs. In an attempt to overcome underreporting, objective biological measures that include urine, saliva, and hair testing have been used to obtain estimates of illegal drug use. This study used data from 114 adult arrestees interviewed as part of Maryland's Substance Abuse Need for Treatment among Arrestees (SANTA) project to compare saliva testing to urinalysis to determine the accuracy in drug detection. The study addressed the questions: would arrestees who provided a urine specimen also provide a saliva specimen, and how did estimates of drug use from self-report data compare with those from biological tests? All arrestees who provided a urine specimen also provided a saliva specimen. Urinalysis and saliva testing detected almost identical rates of cocaine and heroin use, suggesting that saliva testing may be as accurate as urinalysis for detecting recent cocaine and heroin use in criminal populations. However, they may be inappropriate for recent marijuana use. It was suggested that saliva testing may offer several advantages over urinalysis including: (1) ease of collection; (2) less vulnerable to adulteration; (3) arrestees may prefer saliva collection instead of urine collection; (4) there is no concern with arrestees being unable to produce a salvia sample; and (5) saliva can be stored more easily than urine. Additional studies to evaluate the effectiveness of saliva testing were suggested. References