ort for mandatory drug testing in that industry, the courts have been more supportive of Fourth Amendment challenges to the practice in other industries.6
One of the most prevalent complaints against drug abuse testing in the workplace is the alleged potential for false positive results.7 The fact that proponents claim first test accuracy rates in the 92 to 98 percent range does not persuade opponents that serious harm will not occur to thousands of otherwise innocent people because of false positive results from two to eight percent of all drug abuse tests.8 Further,
3Robert H. Coombs, and Louis J. West, Drug Testing: Issues and Options (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 34, 67.
4Jon D. Bible, "Update: Employee Urine Testing and the Fourth Amendment." Labor Law Journal, 90 (November 1989): 675 691.
5"Answers to Employers' Chief Questions on Drug Testing," Nations Business, July 1989, 30.
7Robert P. De Cresce, and Mark S. Lifshitz, Drug Testing in the Work Place (Chicago: American Society of Clinical Psychology, 1989), 37.
8John R. Gillion, "The Dangers of Safety: Employee Drug Testing, Social Control, and the Law," a thesis (University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, 1990), 144. the practice of "borrowing clean" urine from another individual for drug abuse testing purposes is becoming a minor industry.9 Such actions, if sufficiently widespread, would completely negate the value of compulsory drug abuse testing.
Private sector employers have greater latitude in mandating drug abuse tests than to public sector employers.10 First, there is no constitutional prohibition against drug abuse testing. Second, it is widely thought that, if courts rule that mandatory drug abuse testing constitutes unreasonable search, such a finding would apply to public sector employers, as opposed to private sector employers. Recent developments indicate, however, that private employers might be liable to significant dam...