Cause and Effect - Random Drug Testing

Random Drug Testing

In the late 1980s President Ronald Reagan called for a drug-free workplace for federal employees with “sensitive” jobs. When this happened

the workplace took center stage in the national drug abuse prevention effort with the focus being the drug test. No other aspect of the War on Drugs involved such a broad segment of the nation as the drug test at work. Urine tests for abused drugs had previously been limited to forensic, drug abuse treatment, and criminal justice settings (Hans1). The drug test at work became the most controversial aspect of drug abuse prevention efforts. Drug testing in the workplace should be required to ensure a safe and enjoyable work environment .

Drug testing technology and practice evolved rapidly throughout the 1980s. The application of this technology in the workplace was justified by the rapid rise in the percentage of workers who used illicit drugs. Seventy percent of the 14.5 million people who use illicit drugs in America are employed. This has persuaded many Americans to enforce the use of mandatory drug screenings (Hans2).

Drug use had many serious costs in the workplace, including the costs of lost productivity, accidents, and health cost of drug-and alcohol- abusing workers. Not to mention the cost of the “drug test process” which costs companies thousands of dollars.

When the drug test came to the workplace there were intense controversies over any form of testing. For example, there were charges that the tests were inherently unreliable and that they identified as drug users people who were merely in the vicinity of someone using marijuana. It was also claimed by critics of testing at work that common over-the-counter and health food supplements would be misinterpreted as drug positive results (Rothstein78). The publication of guidelines for workplace drug testing by the US. Department of Health and Human Services, federal requirements for drug testing within the federal workforce and among many federally regulated workplaces, and a series of court cases all occurring between 1987 and 1989, shifted the controversy about drug testing away from the question of the reliability or legality of testing.

By 1990 most opponents of testing conceded that when done properly, drug tests were able to accurately and reliably identify recent drug use. The new battleground in workplace drug testing focused on two critical, unresolved areas. The first was whether testing was demanded for workers where there was no "safety or security" risk in their work. In the view of the critics of testing, drug tests at work might be justified for transportation or nuclear power workers, but not for most workers whose jobs were not safety-sensitive. The second battleground in the early l990s about drug testing at work was whether testing should be required for workers on a "random" basis, that is, without individualized suspicion that the particular employee was impaired by drugs at the time the drug test was requested (BCCLA2). Although most drug use does not produce easily detected symptoms, some drug use causes symptoms of impairment that a supervisor with training should notice is worth the investment. Supervisors, and co-workers, can identify the most outrageous examples of drug-caused impairment on the job. Even when signs of recent drug use are identified, such as irritable mood or the appearance of fatigue, these behaviors are often caused by other factors in the employees' lives. Thus, many for-cause tests for drugs will be negative. Supervisors are usually reluctant to ask for a drug test if there is any doubt that the abnormal behavior is caused by drug abuse. Employees are usually not pleased when a supervisor singles them out for a drug test. Supervisors are generally not pleased when the requested for cause drug test comes back showing no recent drug use. Thus, when a company has a for-cause drug test program they typically do few drug tests, even when high percentages of their employees are using illicit drugs.