When you inhale nicotine, it enters your blood stream and your body metabolizes it into continine. Therefore, checking for continine is a way to determine if you are a smoker. Nicotine tests apply immunoassay technology to detect continine in blood, hair, urine, and saliva. All nicotine tests detect the presence of continine at a cut-off point of 200 ng/ml.

How accurate is this kind of test? A member of alt.smokers discussion group say the tests achieves 95 percent accuracy. The tests can measure the level of continine in the body for as long as two weeks.

How long does it take for nicotine to surface in urine tests? American Lung Cancer states that nicotine is gone from your blood and urine within 72 hours after your last cigarette. what you can still find in your urine though, is continine.

Nicotine tests are taken for a few reasons. The most obvious reason is for health insurance. Insurance companies conduct nicotine tests to classify smokers into three different premium classes. As a smoker, your premium will be higher than a non smoker. Studies show that smokers pay as high as three times the premium of non smokers. If you remain smoke free for five years, you get to enjoy the lowest premium.

Another reason would be for concerned parents who want to know whether their teenage child smokes or not. With nicotine tests, you can check your child's tobacco consumption. If you have a family member who smokes in the home, you can examine the exposure of second hand smoke using this test.

American surveys reveal that more than 4 million children under 18 smoke cigarettes. Newspaper headlines expose teenagers smoking in schools. It is no surprise then that some high schools screen their students for cigarettes. School administrators believe that tobacco consumption can lead the students to drug abuse.

When you undergo a smoking cessation program, you can use a continine test kit to confirm your freedom from nicotine and the effectiveness of the program itself. You will also find it useful if one of your quitting methods involves nicotine cleansing products. You can know if it really removes nicotine from your body.

You can easily purchase nicotine test kits from pharmacies, drug stores, or over the internet. The more common brands include NicAlert, TobacAlert, and COT.

Some say that nicotine can leave your body within 24 hours. So, why do you need nicotine tests then? A study by Exam & Profile Services in Wisconsin indicates that continine will appear in urine for weeks after smoking. Unlike other conventional methods such as gas chromatography and HPLC-mass spectrometry, you can use nicotine test kits at home. They are also cheap and simple to apply.