What about people who operate heavy machinery? Or people who earn a living by driving on the road? Or people who dispense pharmaceuticals or other dangerous chemicals? Heck, what about government employees who handle financial transactions that could cost the taxpayers millions of dollars?
There are many reasons for instituting a zero tolerance policy against illegal drugs. I, for one, would RATHER work for a company that required drug testing than one which didn’t.
The American Medical Association says otherwise. The AMA Encyclopedia of Medicine says that cocaine can cause both dependency and psychosis. In addition, the Journal of the AMA reports that cocaine use is linked to high rates of homicide in New York City and that “homicide victims may have provoked violence through irritability, paranoid thinking or verbal and physical aggression which are known to be pharmacologic effects of cocaine” (6 July 1994).
Studies also suggest that cocaine is more dangerous and more addictive than heroin. See http://wings.buffalo.edu/aru/COCAINE.html for further discussion of cocaine risks.
A cocaine user may feel that cocaine does not cause significant impairment, and that cocaine helps him perform on the job. However, the AMA says otherwise. Besides which, employers have the right to lay down certain rules – and if they don’t want the risks involved in cocaine use, they are free to prohibit it.
spooje:
Jubilation said that he wouldn’t trust someone who had used cocaine four days before, so “directly following” isn’t an issue.
This is a special situation - if employees are expected to be “on call” 24/7, the company does have an interest in their ability to work off-hours. However, at any given time, I’d say an employee is much more likely to be intoxicated on alcohol than illegal drugs… yet I’ve never heard of companies refusing to hire drinkers.
As could an employee arrested for DUI or public drunkenness. (Or illegal engagement in oral sex, where applicable.)
Cocaine causes extreme psychological dependence, but relatively little physiological dependence, since withdrawal is generally mild and overwith in 18 hours.
Alcohol causes considerable psychological dependence, as well as considerable physiological dependence, since withdrawal is severe and life-threatening. It is hard to say whether alcohol or cocaine is “more addictive”, since they don’t exactly compare, but they can both be pretty addictive.
However, from a drug-testing standpoint, you’d be much better off testing for alcohol; any given employee is much more likely to be an alcoholic than a cocaine addict.
Have you read the thread thus far? For one thing, you’ll note in my post above that the medical profession very rarely tests for drugs.
Also, no one here is arguing for anyone’s right to come in “all whacked out on drugs”. They’re arguing whether a positive drug test means that one is likely to come in “all whacked out on drugs”.
Dr. J
err, Con Law 101 would generally be short for Constitutional Law 101, as opposed to “convict” law.
As for the OP, I’ve taken drug tests for jobs, and while I’m not pleased about it I do submit. On the other hand, I’ll refuse to take a polygraph test to get or keep a job, because IMHO polygraphs are as accurate as reading tea leaves.
This is long term abuse, my description was not. Please read a description of the short and long term effects of alcohol abuse and then come back here and try to keep a straight face continuing to insist cocaine is worse.
No argument here, heroin is a safer drug then cocaine. On the other hand heroin is vastly over rated.
The AMA says nothing of the sort according to your quote. the AMA says long term abuse is harmful and I have no problem adding that it would undoubtedly have a negative impact on performance. Testing of subjects clearly shows it enhances performance while long term use will degrade performance to a similar degree that alcohol does. I can think of many instances where such a drug could be useful, thats why the military sometimes uses stimulants.
Outside such extraodrinary circumstances cocaine use would never be appropriate on the job. Drug testing, however, has nothing to do with use on the job nor does a positive test indicate any particular risk factor to the employer.
Studies by the National Science Foundation and the AMA show that testing has been ineffective in reducing drug use and has no noticeable impact on reducing either absenteeism or productivity.
The National Academy of Sciences found that illegal drugs contribute little to workplace accidents and that off-duty drug use has about the same small effect on worker accidents as off-duty drinking.
Researchers with the Le Moyne College Institute of Industrial Relations surveyed 63 Silicon Valley companies and found that productivity was 29 percent lower in firms with pre-employment and random testing.
In truth the vast majority of companies have never done cost benefit analysis of drug testing policies largely because they understand them to be of little to no benefit. Simple steps like making counselling services available have considerably better success at lower costs.
The fact is that most companies adopt policies in order to be good corporate citizens and help out in the war on drugs. The government can’t violate the 4th amendment but companies can abuse their contractual powers to do it for them.
Your post made no such distinction. Moreover, the employer has no way of knowing if the person’s use of cocaine was merely short-term – or that it won’t soon develop into long-term use. Where the employees’ safety is concerned, the company has every right to err on the side of caution.
The AMA clearly described some of the effects of cocaine, and they clearly constitute impairment. Naturally, the degree of impairment will depend on the dosage and the extent of prior usage. The point remains, however – the company can not simply assume that such usage was short-term, and that the employee’s usage is conducted under medically safe conditions.
That’s a red herring. It only addresses the wisdom of doing drug tests using current techniques. It does not mean that the employer has no right to do so. Moreover, it could simply mean that we should re-examine the way in which such testing is conducted, or the industries for which the testing has been done.
If a person consumed cocaine four days before work, it’s reasonable for a company to suspect that he might do so one day before work – especially given the high degree of cocaine addiction. In contrast, it doesn’t matter if you attended church or had oral sex before work, since these do not produce any adverse symptoms.
JubilationTCornpone:
About as reasonable as for the company to assume that since an employee had a few beers 24 hours before work, he might have a few beers one hour before work.
I can think of a few, but they’re pretty contrived. On the other hand, it’s also pretty contrived to assert, in the absence of evidence, that users of illegal drugs are more likely to be intoxicated at work than users of legal drugs.
In addition, the very existence of impairment testing makes it a moot point. There’s no need to guess at the probability of an employee being intoxicated when you can know for sure.
If a police officer sees you weaving on the road, he doesn’t just look over your credit card bills to see if you’ve purchased alcohol in the last month, then assume you’re drunk based on that.
My company does test for booze on a pre-employment screening. And I know 1 employee who had to retest when he came up positive.
spooje, what time period was covered by that test?
Not really sure.
Jubilation, I notice you have skirted the issue that brought up the discussion which was your assertion that cocaine had a greater effect than alcohol. Please don’t avoid standing behind your assertions by directing the debate towards trivialities, it gets tiresome.
On the alcohol testing question it is my understanding that metabolites of alcohol are untestable as they are not unique from those produced by carbohydrates generally. This means you must still have alcohol in your system to get a positive. I imagine that means a maximum of about a day after very heavy consumption.
If Ned is correct, then the alcohol test spooje mentioned seems like a fancy breathalyzer - which, of course, is entirely different from a typical past-usage drug test. Someone who fails that test is either drunk or a very heavy drinker… not true for, say, marijuana.
The test I mentioned was definately a urine test.(I had to take one for employment)
Naturally. After all, we are talking about what ‘might’ happen.
The difference is that cocaine is a medically restricted substance, whereas alcohol is not. The FDA and the medical community have judged that cocaine poses a far greater risk.
Even if we grant that to be true, the medical community has already voiced its judgment on the safety of using cocaine. They have judged alcohol to be mostly safe, whereas they have judged cocaine to be patently unsafe.
Only if a company is willing to conduct such testing every day, at every possible opportunity. It should be obvious that this would have a severely negative impact on productivity – all to protect a non-existent “right” of the employees.
There is nothing trivial about quoting what the AMA has to say about cocaine causing psychosis or violent behavior.
The medical community and the FDA have already passed their judgment on cocaine. Granted, there are several factors to consider (e.g. addictiveness, short- and long-term effects, the nature of the symptoms); however, it is dangerous enough to be medically restricted whereas alcohol is not.
Besides, objecting on such fine points is simply missing the forest for the trees. Even if you assume that there are some respects in which cocaine is safer than alcohol, that is hardly an argument against drug testing in general.
JubilationTCornpone:
What matters is how safe it is at work - whether you’re better off with your forklift driver drunk or on cocaine. Surely you aren’t suggesting that alcohol is “mostly safe” in this respect, or significantly safer than cocaine?
That’s exactly what I’m suggesting. In addition to being more accurate and less intrusive, impairment testing doesn’t take days to get results - only a few minutes at most. It doesn’t have to be administered at every possible opportunity; even just by giving the test when employees arrive, you have a far better idea of who’s prepared for work than you’d get from intrusive testing.
Last I checked, employers don’t own their employees (that went out in the 1800s). If this has changed, would you care to describe exactly which parts of an employee’s private life are his own, and which parts belong to his employer?
JubilationTCornpone:
Are you suggesting that cocaine is illegal and alcohol is legal simply because cocaine is considered more dangerous?
Jubilation, I am going to try this one more time before I give up on you.
I have no problem with you using FDA descriptions for the long and short term effects of cocaine. What you need to do to make some sense of this description is compare it to similar descriptions of alcohol. You cannot compare your personal perceptions of alcohol to a medical description of cocaine and have a reasonable comparison.