Workplace Drug Testing And Drug Abuse Policies example essay topic

Privacy in America: Workplace Drug Testing December 31, 1997 Today, in some industries, taking a drug test is as routine as filling out a job application. In fact, workplace drug testing is up 277 percent from 1987; despite the fact that random drug testing is unfair, often inaccurate and unproven as a means of stopping drug use. But because there are few laws protecting our privacy in the workplace, millions of American workers are tested yearly, even though they aren't suspected of drug use. As a soldier in the United States Army, I am subjected to random drug testing on a constant basis. I know first hand how degrading and uncomfortable it is to have a junior ranking employee observe you 100% while doing one of the most personal body functions we do.

However, random drug testing does not discriminate against anyone in the U.S. Army. Employers have the right to expect workers not to be high or drunk on the job. But they shouldn't have the right to require employees to prove their innocence by taking a drug test. I strongly support pre-employment and pre-enlistment drug testing as a means for qualifying an individual for a position. However, unless an employer as valid suspicions, i. e., injury, excessive absenteeism, or first hand knowledge, I do not believe in random drug testing. It is not right for individuals with unblemished work records to be taken away from their duties to be humiliated and forced to urinate in a cup with a "licensed" observer.

That's not how America should work. INVASION AND ERROR Routine drug tests are intrusive. Often, another person is there to observe the employee to ensure there is no specimen tampering. Even indirect observation can be degrading; typically, workers must remove their outer garments and urinate in a bathroom in which the water supply has been turned off. The lab procedure is a second invasion of privacy. Urinalysis reveals not only the presence of illegal drugs, but also the existence of many other physical and medical conditions, including genetic predisposition to disease, or pregnancy.

In 1988, the Washington, D.C. Police Department admitted it used urine samples collected for drug tests to screen female employees for pregnancy without their knowledge or consent. Furthermore, human error in the lab, or the test's failure to distinguish between legal and illegal substances, can make even a small margin of error add up to a huge potential for false positive results. In 1992, an estimated 22 million tests were administered. If five percent yielded false positive results (a conservative estimate of false positive rates) then 1.1 million people could have been fired, or denied jobs because of a mistake. "I waited for the attendant to turn her back before pulling down my pants, but she told me she had to watch everything I did. I am a 40-year-old mother of three: nothing I have ever done in my life equals or deserves the humiliation, degradation and mortification I felt".

- From a letter to the ACLU describing a workplace drug test. TESTS THAT FAIL Claims of billions of dollars lost in employee productivity are based on guesswork, not real evidence. Drug abuse in the workplace affects a relatively small percentage of workers. A 1994 National Academy of Sciences report found workplace drug use "ranges from a modest to a moderate extent", and noted that much of reported drug use "may be single incident, perhaps even at events like office parties". Furthermore, drug tests are not work-related because they do not measure on-the-job impairment. A positive drug test only reveals that a drug was ingested at some time in the past.

Nor do they distinguish between occasional and habitual use. Drug testing is designed to detect and punish conduct that is usually engaged in off-duty and off the employer's premises, that is, in private. Employers who conduct random drug tests on workers who are not suspected of using drugs are policing private behavior that has no impact on job performance. FAR FROM FOOLPROOF Sometimes drug tests fail to distinguish between legal and illegal substances. Depronil, a prescription drug used to treat Parkinson's disease, has shown up as an amphetamine on standard drug tests. Over-the-counter anti-inflammatory drugs like Ibuprofen have shown up positive on the marijuana test.

Even the poppy seeds found in baked goods can produce a positive result for heroin. ABOUT SAFETY-SENSITIVE OCCUPATIONS Alertness and sobriety are, of course, imperative for certain occupations, such as train engineers, airline pilots, truck drivers and others. Yet even in these jobs, random drug testing does not guarantee safety. First, drug-related employee impairment in safety-sensitive jobs is rare. There has never been a commercial airline accident linked to pilot drug use. And even after a 1994 Amtrak accident in which several lives were lost, investigators discovered the train engineer had a well-known history of alcohol, not drug, abuse.

Computer-assisted performance tests, which measure hand-eye coordination and response time, are a better way of detecting whether employees are up to the job. NASA, for example, has long used task-performance tests to determine whether astronauts and pilots are unfit for work - whether the cause is substance abuse, fatigue, or physical illness. Drug tests don't prevent accidents because they don't address the root problems that lead to substance abuse. But good management and counseling can. Employee assistance programs (E APs) help people facing emotional, health, financial or substance abuse problems that can affect job performance. EAP counselors decide what type of help is needed: staff support, inpatient treatment, AA meetings, and the like.

In this context, the goal is rehabilitation and wellness - not punishment. At the Army Reserve Personnel Command in Saint Louis, MO, there is a Employee Substance Assistance Program (E SAP) designed to assist the civilian employees. However, the civilian employees are not subjected to the random drug tests. Only the military personnel who work side-by-side with these civilian employees are tested.

In fact, there have been several civilian government employees at this same location who have been arrested and jailed for non-work related drug charges, and yet they return to work with out consequences. Employers need to kick the drug test habit. SOURCES: American Management Association survey, "Workplace Drug Testing and Drug Abuse Policies"; R. DeCresc e, Drug Testing in the Workplace (BNA, 1989); Under the Influence? Drugs and the American Workforce, National Academy of Sciences, 1994; J.P. Morgan, "The 'Scientific' Justification for Urine Drug Testing", University of Kansas L.R., 1988. WHAT THE ACLU IS DOING Privacy - the right to be left alone - is one of our most cherished rights.

Yet because so few laws protect our privacy, the American Civil Liberty Union's (ACLU) campaign for privacy in the workplace is very important, particularly in the private sector. The ACLU is working in the states to help enact legislation to protect workplace privacy rights. They have created a model statute regulating workplace drug testing. In 1996 the ACLU launched a public education campaign to help individuals across the nation become aware of the need for increased workplace privacy rights. Much more work remains to be done. As of mid 1997, only a handful of states ban testing that is not based on individual suspicion: Montana, Iowa, Vermont, and Rhode Island.

Minnesota, Maine and Connecticut permit not-for-cause testing, but only of employees in safety-sensitive positions. These laws also require confirmation testing, lab certification and test result confidentiality. Hawaii, Louisiana, Maryland, Nebraska, Oregon and Utah regulate drug testing in some fashion; Florida and Kansas protect government employee rights, but not those of private sector workers. Only in California, Massachusetts and New Jersey have the highest courts ruled out some forms of drug testing on state constitutional or statutory grounds. May 19, 2003 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE NEW YORK - Citing the first-ever large-scale national study confirming that school drug testing fails to curb student drug use, the American Civil Liberties Union today called on schools to heed these important new findings and end drug testing programs. "In light of these findings, schools should be hard-pressed to implement or continue a policy that is intrusive and even insulting for their students, especially when drug testing fails to deter student drug use", said Graham Boyd, Director of the ACLU Drug Policy Litigation Project.

While school drug testing has recently become a huge topic of debate in the courts, in schools, and among the general public, there has not, until now, been any conclusive research on whether drug testing is effective in addressing student drug use and how widespread testing is in schools. This federally funded study answers both of these questions. The study, published last month in the Journal of School Health, a peer-reviewed publication of the American School Health Association, found no statistical difference regarding rates of drug use between schools that implemented drug testing policies and those that had not. Analyzing data collected between 1998 and 2001 from 76,000 students in 8th, 10th and 12th grades, the study found that drug testing of any kind was not a significant predictor of marijuana or other illicit drug use by students, including athletes. The United States Supreme Court, which allowed random school drug testing twice for athletes and students in competitive, extra-curricular activities, both times relied on the premise that drug testing plays an important role in deterring drug use. "Obviously, the Justices did not have the benefit of this study", said Boyd, who last year argued against an Oklahoma school drug testing policy in a Supreme Court challenge.

"But schools do, and we urge them to heed these results". The study concludes that "drug testing in schools may not provide a panacea for reducing student drug use that some (including some on the Supreme Court) had hoped... To prevent harmful student behaviors such as drug use, school policies that address... key values, attitudes, and perceptions may prove more important in drug prevention than drug testing". The study also found that the percentages of schools adopting drug testing policies between 1998 and 2001 was relatively low, with only 18 percent of schools implementing drug testing policies, the majority focusing on those who are suspected of using drugs.

Suspicion less drug testing was far less common: less than five percent of schools in the study drug tested athletes, and only two percent of schools drug tested students in extracurricular activities. The ACLU, which has been fighting random student drug testing, welcomed this news. "The research in this study supports the opinion of doctors, social workers and education professionals - many of whom submitted friend-of-the-court briefs supporting the ACLU's Supreme Court challenge - that students and student athletes should not be singled out for involuntary screening for drugs", Boyd said. "As a policy matter, violating students' rights while doing nothing to reduce the amount of drug use in schools makes little sense", he added, noting that other studies have demonstrated that the single best way to prevent drug use among students is to engage them in extra-curricular activities. web Houston Business Journal - web IN DEPTH: HEALTH CARE QUARTERLY Drug use, abuse remain serious workplace problem Becky Vance It is commonly assumed that the growth of corporate drug testing programs has solved the workplace drug abuse problem. Some companies may indeed see a decrease in the number of positive test results. But the number of employees trying to cheat, or adulterate their tests, is increasing.

In Texas, cheating on drug tests is a misdemeanor, but vast numbers of drug users still try. A quick search of the Internet reveals dozens of anti-drug testing Web sites where so-called "cleansing" aids are sold for the sole purpose of helping drug users produce a clean urine drug screen. Drug users can even purchase freeze-dried urine, or human urine that is purported to be "clean". Additionally, anti-drug testing sites, such as (web), list companies nationwide, along with an overview of the types of drug tests they require. While I was using the Internet search engines, Yahoo, Goggle, etc, I received more results for "100% Guarantee Test Clean" web sites than I received on the subject I was looking for.

No matter which way I typed my query in the search box, the results always came back with a tremendous amount of sites from companies that offer products to prevent positive drug urinalysis results. Employers are now starting to address adulteration in several ways. Many are revising their policies to treat all adulterated tests as "positives". When hiring new employees, they are narrowing the window between the time the applicant must obtain a drug test and the offer of employment. The U.S. Department of Transportation, which oversees more than 8 million workers in safety-sensitive positions in the transportation industry, is considering requiring laboratories to test for adulterants. EMPLOYED USERS According to the American Management Association's annual Survey on Workplace Drug Testing and Drug Abuse Policies, workplace drug testing has increased by more than 1,200 percent since 1987.

Most Fortune 500 companies conduct pre-employment drug tests, and virtually all companies that employ drug testing show steady decreases in drug use. That, however, has led to a troublesome, albeit not entirely unexpected result: Small businesses, which employ over half of the nation's workforce, are now a magnet for drug users. And it is these companies that can least afford the legal and business exposures associated with workplace substance abuse. In stark contrast to the popular fantasy that drug users are unemployed losers, approximately 75 percent of adult illicit drug users -- some 8.5 million people -- are employed.

It is estimated that at least one employee in 10 has a problem with alcohol or drugs. No company, large or small, is immune from this problem. However, how can companies test for alcohol related incidents. Businesses should be concerned about the bottom-line impact of substance abuse in the workplace: Absenteeism, de-creased productivity, higher insurance costs, and liability-related expenses.

SS Absenteeism is 66 percent higher among drug users. SS Health benefit utilization is 300 percent higher among drug users. SS Almost half (47 percent) of workplace accidents are drug related. SS Disciplinary actions are 90 percent higher among drug users.

SS Employee turnover is significantly higher among drug users. CHANGING LAWS Laws pertaining to workplace drug testing in the United States are always changing, with courts, legislatures and regulatory agencies at both the federal and the state levels continually modifying their approach. Employers must keep abreast of these changes and regularly reevaluate their drug policies. An employer's right to implement drug and alcohol testing depends on several factors, including whether the employer is in the public or private sector, the employees are contract or "at will", and whether the company is covered by the U.S. Department of Transportation regulations. Collective bargaining agreements may also enter the mix.

In Texas, laws and statutes that affect drug testing include The National Labor Relations Act, state and federal employment discrimination statutes (Title VII and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ), the Family and Medical Leave Act, workers' compensation statutes, unemployment compensation statutes, state constitutions and privacy laws. Employees are not entitled to unemployment benefits if they are fired for violating a written drug testing policy. And, while the ADA protects "qualified individuals with a disability", including alcoholics and recovering drug addicts, the term "disability" does not include a current condition of addiction, and drug tests are not considered medical examinations under the ADA. Although some industries, occupations and demographic groups are statistically prone to substance abuse and addiction, none are immune. Research has shown that employees who receive information about alcohol and other drugs, who work for companies with written policies and who have access to employee assistance programs definitely have lower rates of illicit drug and alcohol use. Thus, common sense and solid evidence tell us that drug testing is good business.

And every employer is in a position to address substance abuse and addiction in the workplace. Stopping it will require effort, understanding and some expense. The victory, however, is well worth both the effort and the initial costs, because no business can afford the cost of doing nothing. Drug Use Among 8th, 10th, and 12th Graders The percentages below show drug use trends among 8th, 10th, and 12th graders over the last 3 years as reported by NIDA's 1996 Monitoring the Future study. The study, conducted by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, has surveyed a representative sample of 12th graders each year since 1975. From National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) NOTES, March / April 1997 Drug Use Estimates 94.1 million Americans aged 12 or over (41.7% of the US population aged 12 and over) have used an illicit drug at least once in their lifetimes.

Source: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, US Department of Health and Human Services, Results from the 2001 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse: Volume 1. Summary of National Findings (Rockville, MD: Office of Applied Studies, August 2002), p. 109, Table H. 1 & p. 110, Table H. 2. According to the National Household Survey, in 2001, 28.4 million Americans aged 12 or over (12.6% of the US population aged 12 and over) used an illicit drug. Of these, 21.1 million were White, 3.1 million were Black, and 2.9 million were Hispanic.

Summary of National Findings (Rockville, MD: Office of Applied Studies, August 2002), p. 109, Table H. 1; p. 110, Table H. 2; p. 102, Table G. 4; and p. 122, Table H. 14. An estimated 971 thousand Americans used crack cocaine in 1998. Of those, 462 thousand were White, 324 thousand were Black, and 157 thousand were Hispanic. Source: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, US Department of Health and Human Services, National Household Survey on Drug Abuse: Population Estimates 1998 (Washington DC: US Department of Health and Human Services, 1999), pp. 37-39. Below are the results of the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse 2001, showing estimates of the US population aged 12 and over who admit to using substances.

It is important to note that the Survey finds very slight use of 'hard drugs' like cocaine, heroin and crack. (Note: Numbers of users are in millions.) Substance Ever Used Used in Past Year Used in Past Month Number of Frequent Users Alcohol 184.4 million 81.7% 143.6 million 63.7% 109.0 million 48.3% 46.3 million 20.5% Tobacco 161.0 million 71.4% 78.6 million 34.8% 66.4 million 29.5% N / A Marijuana 83.2 million 36.9% 21.0 million 9.3% 12.1 million 4.8% N / a Cocaine 27.7 million 12.3% 4.1 million 1.9% 1.6 million 0.7% N / A Crack 6.2 million 2.8% 1.0 0.3% 0.4 0.2% N / A Heroin 3.0 million 1.4% 0.45 0.2% 0.12 0.1% N / A Source: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, US Department of Health and Human Services, Results from the 2001 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse: Volume 1. Summary of National Findings (Rockville, MD: Office of Applied Studies, August 2002), p. 109, Table H. 1; p. 110, Table H. 2; p. 129, Table H. 21; and p. 130, Table H. 22. Below are results from a survey of drug use in The Netherlands published in 1999.

Note the difference in drug use prevalence. For more information check out the Netherlands section of Drug War Facts. Substance Ever Used Used in Past Year Used in Past Month Number of Frequent Users Alcohol 90.2% 82.5% 73.3% 24.3% of past month users Cigarettes 67.9% 38.1% 34.3% not tracked by survey Marijuana 15.6% 4.5% 2.5% 25.6% of past month users Cocaine 2.1% 0.6% 0.2% 1.8% of past month users Crack not tracked separately Heroin 0.3% 0.1% too low to track too low to track Source: University of Amsterdam, Center for Drug Research, Licit and Illicit Drug Use in the Netherlands, 1997 (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam, September 1999), pp. 45, 46, 47, 55. Drug War Facts is a project of Common Sense for Drug Policy.

Copyright (c) 2000-2002, Common Sense for Drug Policy Updated: Monday, 14-Oct-2002 15: 16: 59 PDT ~ Accessed: 47776 times Becky Vance is senior director of Drug-Free Business Alliance (web), a division of the Council on Alcohol and Drugs Houston. (c) 2000 American City Business Journals Inc. Article chosen: Drug use, abuse remain serious workplace problem Copyright: 2000 American City Business Journals Inc. Publication: Houston Business Journal web.