The Integrity News
Vol. X No. 17
ISSN 1081-2717
July 16, 2001
USA Today ( Cover Story -- Section B )
This article is important because it speaks directly to the importance of using
a top quality laboratory (like Quest, formerly SmithKline Beecham) whose
procedures rarely get challenged by candidates. It names some of the smaller
labs and the hospitals that are currently the subject of law suits.
The article begins by stating that the
percentage of companies performing
drug tests has risen steadily since 1987
from 22% to 67% today.
Companies want to keep a drug-free
workplace for three main reasons:
1. As noted by the AMA below, drugs
and "bad things" go hand-in-hand.
2. The discount on your property and
casualty policy, for keeping your
work place "drug-free", should be
more than enough to pay for the drug testing.
3. If you don't test, you don't have a
defense when a plaintiff's lawyer
says that your accused employee
was on drugs at the time of the
incident.
Companies interviewed for the article
said such things as "you almost have to
drug test for self defense, because if you
don't, you get everybody's else's risks."
The American Management Association
(AMA) is quoted as saying that some of the
benefits of drug testing "include lower
accident rates, fewer disability claims,
and decreases in violence and absenteeism."
One company said: "Once we began
testing after accidents, we saw an
immediate decrease in worker's
compensation claims." The Integrity
Center has many clients with firm post-accident
drug testing policies in place
who could confirm that statement.
The article goes on to discuss forms of
testing for illegal drugs other than urine
testing. The article points out that:
o Band-Aid type devices that capture
perspiration and test those samples are
very subject to external contamination.
o Quick on-site tests for employers to
conduct and analyze themselves are
very subject to false positives.
o Hair testing has two major problems:
(1) if the job candidate gets nicked or
otherwise gets an infection from
taking the hair sample, then it was
the fault of the client company's
employee or agent who took the hair sample.
(2) it has a built-in ethnic bias when
testing for cocaine because the readings
for people with darker hair like Asians
and African-Americans will produce
more positive readings according to the
National Institute for Drug Abuse (NIDA).
o Blood testing is very expensive, and most
employers don't want to take the risk of
being accused in the future of the fact that
it was their procedure that transmitted a
blood-borne disease to the former job
candidate.
The article closes by saying that the Federal
Government is expected to establish mandatory
guidelines later in 2001, that will require
employees to undergo testing to be sure that
they have not tampered with their urine samples.
This will effect 8.3 million workers in 650,000
businesses that are involved in interstate
transportation. All drug tests from The Integrity
Center have included this "adulteration testing"
for more than two years.
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