How long will heroin show up in urine?

Question

My roommate's son is a heroin addict, a wife and child abuser and a convicted criminal. He recently got out of jail for doing time for armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill. We called his PO when we found out that he was doing heroin (AGAIN), and they're going to test him when he goes in. I think he may know he's getting tested because magically, three weeks before his PO meeting (for some reason it's only once a month, I don't get it), he 'quits'. A day after his meeting he's wasted again. If he 'quits' now, and his meeting is 5 days away, will it still show up in his urine test?

Answer 1

Heroin breaks down into codeine and morphine. Codeine breaks down into morphine. The opiate drug tests look for codeine, morphine, and 6-acetyl-morphine. The presence of 6-acetyl-morphine is relatively conclusive of recent heroin use, but is only detectable for a few hours after use. The presence of codeine can be the result of either heroin or codeine use. The presence of morphine can be the result of the use of heroin, codeine, or morphine. Relative levels of codeine and morphine can help determine their origin.

With the new higher cutoff levels (2,000 ng/ml), Heroin use will generally only produce a positive test result for a day after single use (somewhat longer with chronic use).

Answer 2

Most narcotics will stay in your urine stream for about 7 days after last use.  However, there are synthetics people can take to 'cheat' the test.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.   If you called the PO already, they may arrange to do a blood test rather than a urine test.