I was told this by a nurse friend, and quite honestly, it sounds both too bizarre and too illegal to be true, but I thought I’d put the question out there and see it anybody knew. Her belief is that some employers are now doing pre-employment drug tests that will pick up ANY medication an employee is taking, so you are REQUIRED to tell them about anything and have a doctor’s note for all of it. This would cover everything, any kind of prescribed medication taken for any reason at all, NOT just controlled substances.
This sounds totally illegal to me. Wouldn’t this mean that basically, an employer would have a way to learn information it would otherwise be totally illegal to find out? For instance, let’s say I’m applying for a job and I have high blood pressure that is 100% controlled by medication. It is totally against the law for an employer to ask this question before hiring an employee. However, if an employee “has to reveal” that they’re taking blood pressure medication and to have a doctor’s note before a pre-employment drug test, employers would clearly then be able to screen out people who might be more expensive to hire because there’s more of a chance that they’d use company health insurance. But blood pressure medication is not a controlled substance or an illegal drug, and taking it has absolutely nothing to do with job performance (neither does controlled hypertension.)
So this sounds like it can’t possibly be legal, but there’s another issue. Are there actually drug tests than could possibly screen for every imaginable prescription drug that is legal and has absolutely nothing to do with controlled substances? That sounds very suspicious to me too. About the only example I can even think of where a prescription drug might show up in a standard drug test would be a stimulant drug for ADHD or narcolepsy, like Adderall, or Ritalin. But other than that, are there even some weird kinds of universal drug tests which a.) exist and b.) are anywhere near cost-effective enough for employers to use? I really don’t have a problem with employers screening for controlled substance use, but this really concerns me. There is absolutely no reason for employees to be required to reveal normal prescription drug use, so I hope that this story is made up and spread around to scare people into giving up their civil rights.
“Any medication” is unlikely. However, I think it is common to run several tests.
I am not a doctor or HR rep, but I can relate an anecdote:
During the hiring process for my current job, I was sent to a private third-party testing business. I tested positive for amphetamines due to my ADHD meds. I talked to someone from that company on the phone, and put them in touch with my psych so they could verify the prescription. I was not asked any questions about meds prior to the test.
In the case of my company, I think the only information they find out is a “Pass/Fail” result from the private testing folks. Since my results checked out with the doctor, they got a “pass” result for me.
It must be complete nonsense. Even if such a test were commercially available, it would be unimaginably expensive. There’s a sign next to the employment kiosk at my local Walmart that just cracks me up. It basically says that all applicants will be subjected to drug screens which will detect everything under the sun at the picogram level, followed by a scanning electron anal probe, or some such nonsense. Piffle—Wally just uses the plain old SAMHSA-5 screen. There are now expanded tests which allow for the detection of a few other substances, but the common denominator here is that these are all psychoactive substances of abuse. There’s just no way they can test for every legend substance marketed in the United States. The only people who have access to a list of everything you take is your insurance carrier, and even their employees can’t just go poking around willy-nilly in your records without a reason. I know a guy who works for WellPoint who got his ass colossally reamed for going into Brittany Spear’s files without authorization. I’m still amazed that he was able to keep his job.
My employer’s drug testing policy states that, if I am randomly drug tested, I need to list all medications I am taking before producing the sample. My guess is that the purpose of the prior notification is so you don’t have a chance to test the sensitivity of the drug screen. That way you won’t know if they would have missed that legally prescribed opiate without your information.
I’m not sure if that scenario is illegal. Don’t employers have the right to discriminate how they want, unless it runs up against an anti-discrimination law? Saying that they’re not going to hire anyone who takes, for example, sudafed, isn’t running up against the law, considering you dont need that medication to survive. I can see how it would be illegal if they discriminated based on medical condition, but testing for legal drugs that isnt tied to such life-altering medical conditions doesnt seem like it would be illegal
But discriminating based on medical condition is exactly what I’m talking about (requiring disclosure of verapamil if you have high BP, of lovastatin if you have high cholesterol, of Prozac of Zoloft if you have depression, etc.). I can really see how this would be a sneaky way to get around the total and complete illegality of asking about medical conditions on an application.