Bridgeport Mayor John M. Fabrizi, challenged last week by the Connecticut Post to take a random drug test, did so and the analysis showed no traces of cocaine or four other drug categories.

Fabrizi responded almost immediately Wednesday that "we'll go right now." He canceled his afternoon appointments, drove with a newspaper editor to a testing center in Milford and provided a urine specimen.

The analysis, done overnight by a laboratory in Kansas and accurate for a 72-hour period, came back negative for cocaine and four other drug categories.

Fabrizi said Thursday he was confident the results would be negative.

The 49-year-old Fabrizi on June 19 confessed to having used cocaine both prior to and after becoming mayor in April 2003. Accompanied by his wife, Mary, he tearfully admitted using cocaine to the newspaper's six-member editorial board. He said he stopped using the illegal drug in late 2004 and was undergoing counseling.

At that meeting, and in subsequent statements, the mayor said he would take a drug test "any time, anyplace, anywhere."

In the days since the mayor's disclosure, public reaction has been mixed, in political circles, in letters to newspapers and in editorials in Connecticut and out of state. Reaction has ranged from calls for his resignation to unqualified statements of support. Early Wednesday afternoon, responding to a request from managing editor Michael J. Daly for a private conversation,

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Fabrizi walked the short distance from Bridgeport City Hall Annex at 999 Broad St. to the newspaper office at 410 State St.

When told the newspaper wanted to take him up on his offer to submit to a drug test, Fabrizi responded, "What, right now?"

Told that the following day would be fine if he needed to clear matters off his schedule, the mayor said "Come on, you come with me and we'll go right now."

Fabrizi had no advance notice nor at that moment had he any idea where the test would be done or what it would involve.

Twenty minutes later the mayor was sitting at a desk in the small office of Gregory Services, 22 Lafayette St. in Milford, providing information to Allen M. Gregory, company president.

The mayor provided a urine specimen and watched as Gregory labeled it and packaged it for express delivery to LabOne Inc. in Lenexa, Kan. The lab report on the mayor's specimen was returned to Gregory Thursday morning. Tests for amphetamines, cocaine, marijuana, opiates and phencyclidine — psychedelic drugs — were negative.

During Wednesday's visit to Gregory Services, Daly asked Gregory if he intended to take a hair sample for analysis. "Hair? You want hair?" Fabrizi asked. He threw his arms open in invitation. Gregory declined. He said hair sampling in Fabrizi's case would have been of questionable value. For example, he said the length of the mayor's hair would have added perhaps 30 days to the test window.

"It didn't strike me as being necessary," Gregory said, "in light of the fact he's admitted he used cocaine."

For federal employees and the vast majority of Fortune 500 companies, Gregory said urinalysis remains the most common form of pre-employment and random testing. At the request of the Post, the mayor has agreed to have an independent laboratory perform a hair test in the near future.

The leading drug test of choice for the federal government remains urinalysis. Random urine sampling is cheap, quick and has more than 20 years of testing protocol behind it.

Hair testing lacks that track record.

But toxicology experts, laboratories and federal government contractors say the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's proposed new rules, in their final state of revision, are likely to make the hair on the back of your head the prime specimen for drug testing.

Each half inch of hair length provides 30 days of history, an inch-and-a-half, for instance, offering a 90-day window. If hair on the head is extremely short or missing entirely, samples can be had from armpit or chest hair.

The urinalysis last week was the second he's taken since confessing he used cocaine, the mayor said.

He voluntarily added his name to a list of city employees who are subject to random drug testing and had taken a urine and breath test as part of that program.