Unfortunately, drug tests are sometimes less than accurate as a measurement of safety or productivity.
For example, several over the counter medications can produce a "false positive," showing that a person has used illegal drugs when in fact he or she has not.
Another problem of drug tests is that they measure drug use at times other than working hours. For example, tests reveal marijuana use up to a month after such use occurred, when any intoxication or impaired behavior would have been confined to the period of two to six hours after smoking the marijuana.
A 1994 committee report by the National Academy of Sciences ("Under the Influence? Drugs and the American Work Force") concluded that "the data ... do not provide clear evidence of the deleterious effects of drugs other than alcohol on safety and other job performance indicators."
Another problem is that drug testing cannot be performed every day. Alcohol abuse may not register in drug testing programs. A business or organization that depends on drug tests to provide a safe workplace will not provide a safe workplace.
The policy of drug testing is based on several errors in reasoning:
Just because a person may have used a drug recently enough to cause a positive test result does not mean that person is impaired at the present time.
Just because a person produces "clean" drug tests does not mean the person is not abusing a substance.
An improved method of securing public safety is "performance" testing. Performance testing requires that an employee pass a quick coordination and skills test when he reports for work each day. Such tests are designed to particularly measure behaviors critical to the success of that worker's job performance.
Performance testing is gaining favor in major corporations, who have seen a steady decline in worker productivity at jobs with invasive drug testing.
Urine and hair testing is not cost effective and in a tight labor market, may rule out badly needed potential employees.
A recent study shows that drug testing declined from 62% of those surveyed in 1997 down to 47% in 2000. A spokesman for American Management Association, who conducted the study, stated that "If you've got an absolutely critical position you need filled and the person shows up dirty on a test for marijuana, you may regret you ever asked."
Another recent study revealed such a high error rate in positive drug test results that in early 2001, the U. S. government issued new standards by which employees may demand a second test or have other recourse before losing their jobs. The reform affects over two million transportation employees, among others.
Drug testing which parents use on their children or which the legal system may impose upon an offender are significantly different issues from workplace drug testing. There is no direct public benefit in parental drug testing. This private family behavior is not an appropriate target of public policy, except in arguments over social ethics.
Testing required of persons as part of a probation or parole period, or as part of a court ordered drug treatment program falls in a difficult area of such policy questions. For some people, such requirements may aid in their efforts toward an improved life by serving to motivate and discipline them through a difficult adjustment to a new lifestyle. For others, such governmental requirements constitute an invasion of privacy and an inappropriately coercive behavioral modification.
School drug testing comes into the public domain, and although the schools' drug policies may reflect a majority of parental and community values, such policies cannot protect the rights of individuals who may not adhere to that value system.
Random student drug testing has been overturned in several court cases. In an August 2000 Indiana case, the court stated that schools can only drug test students if there is probable cause to believe the student is using drugs. In the same month, Maryland school officials settled a dispute brought by students, parents, and the ACLU, ending drug testing at the Talbot County school district.
However, drug testing for cause has been upheld in court decisions, as have been tests of specific groups, such as athletes.
Hair testing detects drug use for the past 90 days, including drugs that normally would be untraceable after only a few hours. Drug detection rates for hair tests can be up to 5 to 10 times greater than for urine testing. Employers and government officials prefer hair testing because it "serves as a very significant and cost-effective deterrent." (Psychemedics Corporations press release, August 23, 2000; www.drugtestwithhair.com )
Drug policy reformers argue that it is not the employer's nor the government's business what a person may do on his or her own time. By devising tests that show a person's activity for a 90 day period, employers and government intrude too far into the private domain. The interest of the employer, for example, can only be to determine that the employee can perform the job adequately. The requirement that a person's life fit a predetermined mold as defined by an employer or the government is a condition of slavery.
Drug testing of mothers at the time of childbirth has resulted in an outbreak of abuses unparalleled since the Civil War. For example, mothers in South Carolina are subjected to "unwarranted, non-consensual drug testing designed and used to facilitate the arrest and prosecution of mothers who tested positive for cocaine."
Such women are immediately jailed, sometimes moments after giving birth. Subsequent loss of custody of their children cause irreparable harm to these women and to their children, usually of poor circumstances without ready access to legal aid.
Search for "drug testing" at http://www.drugpolicy.org/law/drugtesting/