by Jeff Stepper

Created on: February 23, 2007   Last Updated: November 27, 2010

Why Do We Drug Test?

(referenced reports included at the end of this article)

You are working at your dream job when you are selected for a random, mandatory, drug test. You readily give a urine sample since you do not use illicit drugs. Two days later your supervisor calls you into his office and informs you that you failed the drug test and you are no longer employed there. This scenario plays out across the country more often than you would think. Most people are under the mistaken belief that drug tests are infallible. Nothing could be farther from the truth

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On September 15, 1986 Ronald Reagan signed Executive Order 12564 establishing the Federal Workplace Drug Testing Program. Then came the Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988. These edicts made drug testing mandatory for Federal employees and contractors. Since then drug testing has become quite prevalent in state and local governments and the private sector from pre-employment screening to random and for-cause testing. This is disturbing for several reasons. Drug testing is an unproven technology even though the government and the companies that make the drug-test kits would like you to believe otherwise. Studies have shown that they don't work, don't deter drug use, can be quite costly, and are easy to beat.

Proponents of drug testing say that it is a reliable way to improve safety and worker productivity in the workplace, "yet the fact is that urinalysis has been imposed on millions of American workers involuntarily without so much as a single scientifically controlled study to show that it is a safe or effective means of promoting workplace safety" (Gieringer 2). These drug tests also can't tell when or how much a person has ingested or whether they are impaired at work. Most of the estimated 40 million users in this country are defined as casual users. These are people who use only occasionally and don't allow their use to interfere with their work as shown by, "a Postal Service study . . . showed that drug using workers were largely reliable: drug users had a 93.4% attendance record versus 95.8% for others, and 85% of users kept their jobs, versus 89.5% of non-users" (Gieringer 3). As shown by this study, drug use does not interfere with a person's ability to perform his or her job.

Our high school and middle school children are even being tested randomly now. The most common reason being cited is that illicit drug use needs to be stopped in its infancy before our kids get hooked. In reality, random

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