The effectiveness of drug screens may be limited by the brief presence in the body of many substances of abuse and their metabolites. Stimulants are detectable in the urine for up to one or two days. Cannabis, which is lipid soluble, may be detected for one month or more when use has been chronic. In many ways adolescents who use and abuse substances differ from adults. What we would call physiologic dependence is much less common among adolescents.
Adolescent use tends to be more sporadic.
The use of multiple substances is more characteristic of adolescents with difficulties than it is with adults with difficulties. Another difference may be that adolescents are more likely to have coexisting psychiatric disorders than adults. For instance, in adults, just having alcoholism is quite common, whereas it is rare to see an alcoholism problem and nothing else in an adolescent. But they have to be put in the appropriate developmental context. However, Bukstein said there are few well-controlled studies of specific treatment modalities for adolescent substance use disorders.