Yes, there is a test that can tell if the cotinine came from tobacco or non tobacco use. I can’t remember what it is called, but will post when I come across it again.
I’ve been working in a Medical Review Office for 15 years. What we do is review results from drug tests. When a sample is tested at a lab (Quest, Labcorp, Medtox, and many others) it gets reported to an MRO (us). Our function is to understand the drugs & their metabolites & determine, through an interview with the donor, whether there was a legitimate medical explanation for the result. If there is, we report a negative result.
Now, we don’t interview positives for Cotinine or Alcohol, because they are not prescription meds. However, we do have customers who order these tests. Just Friday I spoke to a customer who was ordering a cotinine test that I hadn’t seen before & the name of eludes me right now, but the gist of it is that i think it looks for another compound found in the plant itself which would determine if the nicotine (cotinine) came from the whole leaf or from another source.
There is a similar test for THC to determine if the source is from the plant or from the prescription drug Dronabinal (Marinol). The scrip is synthetic THC, so when someone has that scrip the employer can order a THC-v test. If that is positive, it is not from the med that contains only THC delta9.
I’ll post the name of the test when I come across it again.
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