Someone posted a question in General Questions about how to beat a drug test. So here is my Great Debate: when is it legal to help someone else break the law? When is it moral? How about helping someone break an agreement? Either an employment contract or even a school honor code? Would it be moral to help me if I said “Here are my take-home test questions in law school, Melin, DSYoungESQ, Bricker, jodih, please answer them for me.”
What are your thoughts on this topic?
Off the top of my head, it is not moral to help someone do something immoral. As to whether it is immoral to help someone break the law, that depends on whether breaking the law is moral. It is moral to help someone break the law by smuggling Jews out of Hitler’s Germany; it is not moral to teach someone how to beat a breathlyzer so they can beat a drunk driving test. It is not moral to help someone break an agreement, so long as the agreement itself was morally made (i.e., no gun to the head to force an agreement).
“It’s like I always said…there’s nothing an agnostic can’t do if he really doesn’t know whether he believes in anything or not” --Monty Python, “The Meaning of Life”
I don’t think it is moral for an employer to mandate ones personal behavior (at least with respect to drug use) while that person is off the job. I would help a person beat a drug test that tested positive due to residual drugs in the body that no longer affect the employee while at work. I would not help that person if the intent was to allow him to work inebriated and escape detection when tested.
The law is different from personal ethics. I believe that drug tests are an invasion of privacy, and that their results - positive or negative - have absolutely no bearing on whether or not a person can do a job.
The best answer, of course, is that when your personal ethics clash with the law, you should fight to have the law changed while still obeying it. The second best answer would be to break the law openly and honestly in a display of civil disobedience and answer to the legal consequences.
However, the subject of drug laws is so inflamed that it is horrendously difficult to do either. The penalties for drug use are astronomical and include not only jail time for first time offenders, hefty fines, but also ruination of credit records, confiscation of worldly good, and very little chance of passing any background check when released from prison.
A lot of drug-policy protestors have been locked up for making their voices heard, and there just doesn’t seem to be much change in the political climate. For an example, please check out Peter McWilliam’s Trial for use of medical marijuana.
So, I’m trying to abide by the best solution - that is, obey the law while trying to change it. I work for a company that emphatically does not drug test. (When I asked, the reply was “well, if you need your drugs tested, bring 'em over.”). Not everyone has that choice. Some industries are given completely over to drug testing, and the courts back them up. I understand if some people choose different methods. I’m not necessarily going to help them, but I won’t call the cops on them either.
“Some industries are given completely over to drug testing, and the courts back them up.”
And some industries are REQUIRED to engage in drug testing. The main example that comes to mind is transportation. Random drug testing is required for airline pilots, truckers, intercity bus drivers, railway engineers, and ships’ crews.
“The law is different from personal ethics. I believe that drug tests are an invasion of privacy, and that their results - positive or negative - have absolutely no bearing on whether or not a person can do a job.”
As someone who travels and who has family members and friends who travel, I am damned glad for drug and alcohol testing of transportation operators, and vehemently disgaree that the results of testing have no bearing on ability to perform THAT job. Members of the public board a common carrier and completely entrust their lives, by the dozens or even hundreds, into the hands of another. Once aboard, they have absolutely no control over their fates; they cannot ensure that the operator of their vehicle has clear senses feeding information into a clear mind to quickly direct hands and feet to operate the vehicle in a safe manner. Except indirectly through the government agencies that regulate the safety of transportation.
But what about soft or “harmless” drugs like marijuana, which allegedly cause neither hallucinations nor permanent physical damage to the user? I will assume that is true. (Also let us leave aside the issue of whether such drugs should be generally legalized: that is not directly relevant to the testing issue, since alcohol is a legal substance and yet it is illegal to operate a vehicle under its influence and transportation operators are tested for it.) Do you deny that someone under the influence of alcohol or marijuana has impaired faculties that are directly related to the safe operation of his or her vehicle?
To quote from a pro-marijuana website (the URL is at the bottom of this message, in hopes that the HTML will work if the URL is by itself), “Cannabis that is grown sparsely and with reasonably good conditions will produce a plant that when ingested results in a psychoactive high that was once described as ‘halfway between sleepiness and euphoria.’” The operation of an airplane, train, bus, truck, or automobile requires a clear mind and responsive reflexes that is the antithesis of such a state. Would you want the pilot of your plane to be simultaneously drowsy and exceedingly giddy (thus less likely to recognize their own drowsiness and its potential effects)? Would your answer change just because he is a generally-healthy individual and he is not experiencing any hallucinations?
I don’t disagree that random drug and alcohol testing is OFTEN an unjustified invasion of privacy. A mental state “halfway between sleepiness and euphoria” would probably not significantly diminish the ability to perform many common jobs, and the presence of the remnants of drug use doesn’t always mean that the person is presently under the influence. But your assertion is an absolute, and my response is that there is at least one industry where test results (to the extent that they are accurate) DO indicate ability to perform one’s job and where the privacy implications of testing are outweighed by the safety implications of not testing.
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1095
What he said. And it holds true outside the transportation industry as well.
As a restaurant manager I’ve fired people for using at work (pot). I didn’t test them, I caught them smoking. They got pissed off at me, because they knew I used to smoke myself.
But they aren’t the only ones who’ll pay the price when they fall into a deep-fryer (seen it) or slice off a thumb (seen it). On the contrary–it’s very possible I’ll pay for it, in higher insurance rates and a possible lawsuit.
Not to mention having to throw out the entire vat of oil 'cos it tasted like cooked stoner. 
Almost anyone who comes to work in a restaurant stoned decreases productivity. True, there are those who are good enough at their jobs that they can work with a buzz on, but they are by far the exception.
That said, LEGALIZE!
-andros-
When I hear, “Invasion of privacy,” it evokes a sense of force, of one helpless to resist. Mandatory drug testing of everyone living on a certain street would be an odious example of such a thing.
But if the testing is in connection with obtaining a job, or keeping a job… then the person to be tested is not being coerced in the slightest. He’s agreed in advance to the testing, and his remedy if he feels aggrieved is to quit.
I echo the earlier comments with respect to testing airline pilots and similar jobs – I am very glad they do.
With respect to the more general question of the OP – again echoing an earlier cooment – it is immoral to help someone do something which is immoral.
Not all laws are moral. Laws fall into two categories: malum prohibitum, something that is ‘wrong’ only because a law prohibits it, and malo in se, things that are wrong in and of themselves. If I depreciate non-taxable income brought forth in the previous tax year, is that wrong? Beats me. But it’s not inherently wrong. On the other hand, sexual abuse of an infant is morally wrong, and people of any society do need a law to tell them it’s wrong.
Having made that grand statement, I would certainly opine that a law forbidding the use of marijuana is an example of malum prohibitum.
I think the question here isn’t one of whether it is moral to help someone break the law, but whether it is moral to help someone break the rules.
The law is the complilation of formally adopted rules by which we live. Rules are a more encompassing set of strictures by which we are supposed to adhere.
In the example of drug testing, the law mandates testing of train engineers. But the law doesn’t mandate the testing of a fast-food worker. If a fast-food chain mandated testing as a condition of employment, that would be a rule.
I believe that it is rarely moral to break either a law, or a rule by which you have agreed to be bound. Helping someone do so becomes your own immoral act by extension.
However, when you have not agreed to be bound by a given rule which is not a law, then the morality issue becomes a more general one of whether the conduct in question is moral or not, that is, who does it help and who is hurt by it?
If John Doe, a student at WeWannaWin Law School, comes to me with an exam paper, and asks me to help him write the answer, and I know that John Doe is supposed to do the work himself, then helping him would be immoral, in all likelihood. John would be breaking a rule by which he agreed to be bound.
When discussing such issues, keep in mind the difficulties these questions present to those who feel that civil disobediance is necessary to end some law or practice they view as immoral. I think anyone who contemplates such activity must be paying a high price when they have to wrestle with the morality of adhering to laws and rules with the morality of getting the law to reflect truly proper (as they see it) morality.
Seems to me the whole “Flashing headlights” thread fits in hear as well. Thats just another example of helping people break the law. I read that whole thread and it seems to have gotten off track a little so maybe the question could get answered here. Is it illegal to warn people about a speed trap by flashing there lights?
Bricker said
In this example I think that the threat of losing one’s job, or the threat of not being hired, constitutes coersion. You’re being forced to take and pass the test, ot suffer the consequences.
AvenueB-guy (wouldn’t be in the Antelope Valley, would you?),
IMO, it is not immoral to warn a person of a speedtrap. It’s a right covered by the First Ammendment. If the person slows down, then the purported goal of having speed laws is attained: The person is traveling at a safer speed. If the person doesn’t slow down and gets a ticket, then you can call him an idiot for not listening to you.
Are you suggesting that an employer shouldn’t have the privilege of setting reasonable conditions for employment? Or that one such condition be that his employees are law-abiding?
“Coerce” means “to bring about by force or threat.” We are not talking about force, here, so I assume you equate this to a threat. A “threat” is an expression of intention to inflict evil, injury, or damage.
The word cannot fairly be applied to an exercise of legitimate options. An employer has every right to hire whom they wish.
There are public policy strictures, of course. As a society, we seek to promote racial equality; we thus constrain employers from refusing to hire based on the impermissible criterion of race. But we do not enjoin employers from refusing to hire drug users.
A person seeking a job has no right to that job. To refuse to hire a person that cannot pass a drug test is not coercion.
I will admit that a person hired without mention of any drug testing policy cannot fairly have one imposed upon him. At that point, he has an interest in the job, and the employer should not unilaterally change the conditions.
But to suggest that an employer cannot fairly create such rules in the beginning is… well… wrong. 
Bricker,
Of course there should be “reasonable” conditions for employment. I don’t believe that drug tests are reasonable for most jobs. I think that what a person does on his off-time is his own business (witht he usual caveat of “as long as he’s not hurting anyone”. You know what I mean.).
I don’t use drugs, but I feel I have a right to use them if I want to. If a person is unable to function because of drug use (and that includes alcohol), then he should be counceled, warned, terminated… whatever is appropriate. If a person gets high on weekends but is unimpaired when he goes to work, then it’s not the company’s business.
There are obvious exceptions, such as pilots. Pilots are specifically prohibited from using drugs in the Federal Aviation Regulations. They’re also not allowed to have an alcoholic drink within eight hours of flying. This goes for “Sunday pilots” and jumbo-jet drivers alike. In this case, I can accept drug tests as a condition of employment. (Actually, since drug testing of pilots started several years ago, it’s been found that virtualy no pilots use illegal drugs.)
So pilots, yes. It’s a condition. The greeter at WalMart, no.
If a person MUST get a job, then the possibility of not getting one could be perceived as an “evil, injury, or damage”.
Well, we may be entering “agree to disagree” mode.
I was going to talk about the health risks associated with illegal drug use, and suggest that an employer has a legitimate right to limit his exposure to increased health care costs by banning drug users. But that’s true of tobacco use also, and I agree that employers should not ban smokers.
Perhaps I’ll think of another argument with more weight… but for now, I’m left with, “I just think they ought to be able to do it.” Which convinces me just fine, I might add, but which I recognize is not exactly an argument remarkable for its persuasive effect overall.
Testing for drug use, if not used as an indication of being able to do the job, is an obtrusion into someone’s private life. Now, I don’t know if LSD use on the weekends will interfere with driving a bus on Wednesday; that’s not in my field of expertise.
But to suggest that employers can set whatever policies they want when hiring is just wrong, legally and factually.
I can’t just decide to hire pretty women who like dressing up as cheerleaders while being chased around the office by a big burly guy (unless that’s in the job description). I can’t refuse to hire a Baptist just because I disagree with Baptist theology if it doesn’t make an impact on job performance. And I can’t refuse someone based on race or age or anything else that doesn’t make an impact on job performance.
So if (and that mya be a big if) the use of certain substances does not effect job performance, how does it suddenly become okay to use this use as a criterion for hiring and firing?
Bucky
Oh, well. We can always make more killbots.
John (Bredin), please understand that I absolutely do NOT disagree with you. No one should operate a motor vehicle while when they aren’t completely sober. I won’t drive if I’ve taken an antihistamine (which, all things considered is a good idea, at least on my part).
However, drug tests - urine and hair - test for metabolites of drug ingestion. They give absolutely no indication of a person’s fitness to operate a motor vehicle (or perform surgery, or negotiate for hostages, or anything else) at that time. The best it can do is pinpoint that sometime in the past, that person injested something that left a particular metabolic end product in their urine or hair. They don’t even test for alcohol, which is at least as big a problem as drugs.
The most brilliant and safety concious surgeon could smoke a joint two weeks previous to my operation and flunk the test, leaving me with a surgeon who tests clean but just down five martinis. Given the choice, I think I’d rather have the occasional pot smoker holding the scalpel, but that is just me.
Drug testing costs money. Lots and lots and lots of money. It infringes on our personal liberty. That’s bad enough. What’s worse is that it doesn’t answer the concerns you and I hold in common: are we safe when we give over control of our bodily safety to someone else.
I would like to see drug tests replaced with a different kind of test. I would like to see a test that ascertains whether a someone has the dexterity, reaction times, perception, and coordination necessary to complete the task at hand successfully right then. Then, I would like to see every person who has to fly a plane, drive a truck (or a car), calculate anesthesia dosages, fight fires, and so on pass that test before they go out there to do that job.
Drugs - be it alcohol, pot, cocaine, caffeine or antihistamines - alter a person’s perception and change the way they interact with reality. If a person takes drugs and lets it interfere with their work responsibilities, they have no business doing that work. If, however, they use their drug of choice in private without endangering anyone or compromising their obligation to their employers, their privacy should be respected.
My best guess is, it’s never legal to help someone break the law. If the law is written and you help a person break the law, you therefore are committing a law breaking act. I think a good example is aiding and abedding a felon.
Whether or not it’s moral, this doesn’t apply. In light of all the laws on the books, I don’t have a contract with the government (as far as I am concerned) to follow so-called laws they place on the books. If they state (check out http://www.dumblaws.com)) I can’t have sex after 6:00 pm on Sunday, is it my responsibility to follow this law? Hell no! I feel the law to be stupid and does not apply to me. In this instance, then I am helping another person commit a law breaking act and vice versa.
Now, if you are talking about a criminal act that harms another person physically (occasionally emotionally,) then the law should be carried out and the person who helped a killer kill someone then it’s a crime committed. But when it is confined to moral behavior (drugs, sex which includes prostitution, or other such non-violent acts) then the law only is written to coerce the person into moralistic behavior that may or may not be the beliefs of the person who committed the law-breaking act. Therefore, I suggest that if you assisted someone into breaking the law, say by purchasing a dime bag for a friend who has glaucoma or cancer, you are helping and not harming the person and should not be criminally charged.
As for employment issues, I take serious offense to employers that in the middle of a person’s employment to conduct drug policies without informing the employees. I have seen this happen.
I agree, if you are entering into a new job and the conditions of the job are that you pass a drug test, then that is your decision to be employed there or not. I also believe that it is not the employers right to act as Big Brother when it comes to drug testing, which in effect this is what it is under today’s climate.
It’s not the employer, in most instances, that is stating you can’t use drugs or alcohol on your own time, it is the insurance companies and the government. If they don’t identify who and who isn’t a drug user the company faces higher insurance costs which is mandated by the government.
Hey, I am all for a company that chooses not to have drug users as employees, but under the current system the employers are forced to test.
But as to morally or legally helping someone break the law, it’s two different things entirely, IMO.
dangit http://www.dumblaws.com
Bucky, if you’re referring to my post, I would invite you to read the entire post, wherein I specifically noted that there are certain public policy exceptions to the general statement that an employer may set whatever conditions he wishes.
Correct. Public policy prohibits sexual harrassment. Moreover, that public policy is codified into law, so that it is absolutely clear that it is the will of the people of the United States that jobs not be conditioned on sex, or performed in the sexually hostile work environment you describe.
Correct. It is the public policy of this land that religion not be used as a criterion for job selection or advancement. Once again, that public policy has been expressed not as an inchoate wish, but as a law, so that it is beyond cavil that the people of the United States do not countenance religion as a permissible reason to hire, fire, or promote.
Correct. Public policy. Law. (I got tired of typing out the full spiel).
Because there is no public policy protecting drug users, and there is no law protecting them either.
Do you see the difference?
Now, you may argue that there should be such a public policy, and that there should be such a law.
As I noted in another post, I don’t agree, but there is ample evidence for your position.
But don’t suggest that employers can’t, because they can. Should or shouldn’t, I will leave for another day.
This is a collateral issue to the OP, but I wanted to take a moment and debunk the site above.
Here is the list they offer for Virginia:
[ul][li]You can’t have sex with the lights on and in any other position than the missionary position.[/li][li]It is illegal to sell peanut brittle on Sundays. (Repealed)[/li][li]You cannot sell lettuce on Sunday, but you can sell beer, wine etc. (Repealed)[/li][li]There is a state law prohibiting “corrupt practices of bribery by any person other than candidates.”[/li][li]You may not work on Sunday. (Repealed)[/li][li]It is illegal to spit on sidewalk.[/li][li]It is illegal to have sexual relations without marriage.[/li][li]You may not have oral or anal sex.[/li][li]Driving while not wearing shoes is prohibited. (Repealed)[/li][li]It is also illegal to have consensual sex with an adult to whom you are not married.[/li][li]Police radar detectors are illegal.[/li][li]Citizens must honk their horn while passing other cars.[/li][li]Children are not to go trick-or-treating on Halloween.[/li][li]It is illegal to tickle women.[/li][li]You cannot buy hardware of any kind on Sunday. (Passed in 1975, repealed in 1977)[/ul][/li]
OK, let’s see how these stack up against the truth. I am not going to address the laws they note as “repealed,” since they are apparently no longer laws.
You can’t have sex with the lights on and in any other position than the missionary position.
Absolutely false. No law in the Commonwealth of Virginia has this provision.
There is a state law prohibiting "corrupt practices of bribery by any person other than candidates."
At best very misleading, since it appears that candidates are exempt from bribery laws. But in fact, the law prohibits bribery by or to candidates (see Va. Code § 18.2-438, § 18.2-439, providing that the crime is a Class 4 felony).
It is illegal to spit on sidewalk.
True. § 18.2-322 provides that it is a Class 4 misdemeanor to “…spit, expectorate, or deposit any sputum, saliva, mucus, or any form of saliva or sputum upon the floor, stairways, or upon any part of any public building or place where the public assemble, or upon the floor of any part of any public conveyance, or upon any sidewalk abutting on any public street, alley or lane of any town or city.” I’m not so sure that’s a dumb law.
It is illegal to have sexual relations without marriage.
You may not have oral or anal sex. It is also illegal to have consensual sex with an adult to whom you are not married.
True. These may be considered ‘dumb’ laws, I suppose, but many states have them, and the Supreme Court ruled very recently that such prohibitions are constitutional.
Police radar detectors are illegal.
True, but I’m at a loss to see why this is a dumb law, since presumably the purpose of a radar detector is to avoid being caught breaking the law.
Citizens must honk their horn while passing other cars.
False. There is no such provision in the laws of Virginia.
Children are not to go trick-or-treating on Halloween.
False. There is no such provision in the laws of Virginia. There is a law forbidding wearing a mask in a public place, but it specifcally exempts “persons wearing traditional holiday costumes.” (Va Code § 18.2-422).
It is illegal to tickle women.
False, unless you consider the general law banning an assault. That is, if the tickling is consensual, it is perfectly legal; if it isn’t, it’s assault like any other unwanted touching. In any event, it’s not a dumb law.
Every time I get one of these “lists of dumb laws” in the mail, I want to wince. This site does not have a good batting average.
Since this thread has been thoroughly hijacked into discussing conditions of employment, I thought I would address those a bit.
Employment, in general, in almost all states, is ‘at will’. This is what allows you to quit when you want; it also allows an employer to terminate when they want. There are usually some exceptions made (we don’t like employers acting totally unreasonably); for instance, the employer usually cannot terminate you legally if the purpose or result of such termination is to discriminate against you on the basis of your race or sex. However, an employer has the right, usually, to modify the terms of continued employment; the assumption is that, if you don’t like the modification, you can leave the employment and employ with someone else. Some inroads are being made into this general rule, but I think that, legally, an employer in most states can unilaterally impose drug testing as a condition of employment as long as the employment is ‘at will’ and not by contract (e.g.: unions).
I know that many of us view our jobs as something we hold by right, and view obtaining a job as something that we have AS a right (indeed, an argument can be made that the basis for the employment provisions of the ADA is precisely this assumption). However, no one has a ‘right’ to work, not in the sense that they have a ‘right’ to be free from unreasonable seizure by the police, or, even, the ‘right’ to be educated by the state. Working for an employer is something that you do because you and the employer agree that you and the employer want you to work for the employer. If you are uneducated, illiterate, and anti-social, good luck finding a job!
What impact does this have on conditioning employment on drug tests?
One can view an employer who imposes a drug testing regimen wihtout evidence of an employment-related need to do so as being a poor employer for this choice. If so, don’t work for them (no one says you have to). If enough people in society objected to working for such employers, then they would be forced to cease their condition of employment. But, while you may have a right of ‘privacy’ from the government (can you imagine everyone taking mandatory drug testing monthly), you do NOT have a ‘right’ to work for an employer under your terms only.