Drug Testing in the Workplace

This paper will be concerned with the issue of drug testing in the workplace. In 1986, President Reagan began encouraging federal employers to test their employees for drug use. In particular, Reagan wanted such tests to be made on employees in jobs involving sensitive information or public safety. Today, the federal government continues to maintain its policy of requiring drug testing "for its employees and the employees of federal contractors." In addition, many companies in the private sector have followed the lead of the federal government and have also begun to test their employees for drug use. The majority of the companies who conduct routine drug tests do so at! the pre-employment level. In this way, an effort is being made to screen and reject drug users before they are employed in the first place. Statistics show that "more than half of all midsize and large companies in the U.S. now test the urine of job applicants for illegal drugs and reject those who come up positive." Despite the widespread acceptance of drug testing in the workplace, the issue continues to be controversial. Many Americans feel that random drug testing is an invasion of privacy. Furthermore, many people question the validity of drug testing for determining the suitability of a particular applicant for a job.

Those who argue in favor of employee drug testing claim that drug use has a detrimental impact on worker productivity. In this regard, studies have shown that employees who u

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distinction between a person who is a casual user of drugs and one who is a heavy or chronic abuser of drugs. The test only shows that a particular drug was used. It does not show specific details such as how much, how often, or how recently the drug was, used. This factor confuses the issue for many employers who feel that they should only screen heavy abusers of drugs. This way of thinking is based on the idea that the casual user and the heavy abuser work at two different levels of quality in terms of workplace performance. Nevertheless, the trend in recent years has been toward the screening of all drug users, regardless of the level of use. This point of view is based on the idea that even casual drug use is detrimental to employee safety and company productivity. In addition to these error possibilities, there is also the chance of something going wrong during the actual testing process in the laboratory. Even though the accuracy rate for the enzyme multiplied immunoassay technique is approximately 99 percent, test scientists "warn that every positive test result should be confirmed by another, more elaborate and expensive test method." This back-up test is important because it helps to make sure that the person b

Category: Government - D