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For chronic and heavy marijuana users (cannabis use daily or more often for periods of several months):
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it has been reported that the marijuana metabolites were detectable in the urine with EMIT-d.a.u. at 20 ng/ml for an average of 31 days with a range of 4-77 days of abstinence (Ellis et al. 1985),
An individual who smokes regularly even as few as two or three times a week will generally have marijuana-positive urines most of the time. A heavy (daily for months at least), chronic smoker who stops smoking may continue to produce positive samples for longer than a month (depending on the assay cutoff) because of the amount of THC accumulated in the body. It becomes difficult, therefore, to distinguish between the chronic smoker who may in fact have stopped smoking weeks before from the smoker who has not.