Nor do they distinguish between occasional and habitual use.ĭrug 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. A positive drug test only reveals that a drug was ingested at some time in the past. 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.”įurthermore, drug tests are not work-related because they do not measure on-the-job impairment. – From a letter to the ACLU describing a workplace drug test.Ĭlaims of billions of dollars lost in employee productivity are based on guesswork, not real evidence.ĭrug abuse in the workplace affects a relatively small percentage of workers. 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.” “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. If five percent yielded false positive results (a conservative estimate of false positive rates) that means 1.1 million people who could have been fired, or denied jobs – because of a mistake. In 1992, an estimated 22 million tests were adminstered. Police Department admitted it used urine samples collected for drug tests to screen female employees for pregnancy – without their knowledge or consent.įurthermore, 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. 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. The lab procedure is a second invasion of privacy. 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. Often, another person is there to observe the employee to ensure there is no specimen tampering. However routine drug tests have become, they’re still intrusive. But they shouldn’t have the right to require employees to prove their innocence by taking a drug test. 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.īut 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.Įmployers have the right to expect workers not to be high or drunk on the job. Today, in some industries, taking a drug test is as routine as filling out a job application. (Access this report for detailed discussion of the issue.)
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