Wouldn’t the ADA protect workers with a valid prescription? It’d be a lawsuit waiting to happen if a job is denied due to a medical condition that requires a particular drug to control it.
Yeah, except if you’re unemployed with no income good freakin’ luck trying to get a lawyer to help you with that.
Unless that drug interferes with you being able to do the job. I am going to be out of work next week and I’ve done a lot of looking a lot, and I have been on several drug tests already.
Seems companies are being much more free with them, then in the past. I don’t do any drugs but still didn’t get the job. Every drug test I went on gave me the option of getting a copy of the result for myself. I asked for it, but haven’t got anything back.
I often wonder if there isn’t some kind of a work-around to where the employer can see the results. Or it may be a tactic to scare off people who use drugs. I mean why bother taking the test if you know you’re gonna fail.
I know the employer isn’t supposed to see the actual results, just the pass/fail, but we all know in the real world what is supposed to happen, often times does not happen at all
You don’t need a lawyer to make a complaint to the EEOC. The EEOC may or may not take over your case. Most states have a Human Rights Commission, which also prosecutes cases on behalf of citizens for violations of state-level human rights laws (which, very often, are more protective than Federal laws).
Moreover, many attorneys who do human rights-related cases, work on contingency – they take a cut if you win, usually 30%, otherwise they work for free.
I had prescriptions for codeine based pain pills while driving for a living; no one ever raised the issue. but I did have to pass a “drug test.” But, I was classified as an “independent contractor” and not as an employee; maybe that would make a difference.Strangely enough, I was delivering prescription drugs, including narcotics, to nursing homes at the time. If it mattered, I guess it didn’t matter much.
Yeah, I have at least two prescriptions that will raise flags on drug tests - Adderall for my ADD will show up as amphetamine (because, really, that’s what it is), and diazepam for muscle spasms and panic attacks (Valium). Occasionally, I’ll have a prescription for hydrocodone for whatever limb I’ve managed to damage. I always tell them up front, and I always, always get either a panicked or very disapproving call from the testing facility, whereupon I supply them with my doctor’s information and they can confirm that it’s a legal prescription.
In Texas, they would confirm with my pharmacy. For some reason, out here in California, it has to be the doctor.
Haven’t had any funny looks from employers, but generally I’m working in IT, and if they got too picky about what their employees ingested, they wouldn’t be able to staff their department.
I just bring in a spare business card for my PCP’s office, and list the contact info for the military med by mail program. I give it to them, and give them a typed out list of what I take and they deal with it from there.
I’ve seen a law firm’s analysis that “under the influence” doesn’t just mean having the substance in your system, but being impaired by it. Their conclusion was that this would mean that a long-term opiate-tolerant patient, for instance, would not be convictable for a DUI just for having some level of a substance in their system as long as they passed field sobriety tests, but anybody who failed sobriety tests and was found to have any drug in their system would be guilty of DUI. This was in California.
If anybody cares, I can probably dig up the cite.
I’ve seen a law firm’s analysis that “under the influence” doesn’t just mean having the substance in your system, but being impaired by it. Their conclusion was that this would mean that a long-term opiate-tolerant patient, for instance, would not be convictable for a DUI just for having some level of a substance in their system as long as they passed field sobriety tests, but anybody who failed sobriety tests and was found to have any drug in their system would be guilty of DUI. This was in California.
If anybody cares, I can probably dig up the cite.
Edited to add: I don’t know if that analysis is reasonable, though, and would be interested to hear what real lawyers have to say about it, if there are any reading this. 
I do know that I’ve seen laws that specifically criminalize having any level of drug X in your body while driving; there was a law like that passed here in Nevada after a teenager who had smoked marijuana recently enough that it was still detectable in the test caused a car accident that killed a bunch of other kids in the car.
drug tests???
I’d understand that for a military or police job, but since when do private companies have the right to drug test you?
Capitaine, in Spain you can get a drug test as part of your pre-job checkup if it’s relevant to the job. Drivers, people operating heavy machinery, people working with dangerous materials in sufficient amounts. Whether you actually get it or not depends on whomever is paying for the test: it can be the employer or, in the case of subcontracting situations, the company at the top of the subcontracting pyramid; people who are self-employed can pay for it themselves and just give the certificate that they’ve had their checkup to whomever asks (since you’re self-employed, the people who are above you in the pyramid don’t even get the “pass”, just a “this person got a medical checkup”).
Medical results are reported as either “pass” or “limited”, where “limited” could be something like “should not lift weights above 50kg” (in other words, “have you seen this guy’s back? We don’t know how can he walk!”). They don’t give a “fail”, as even people with “Total Disability” can get jobs.
Why wouldn’t they have the right to ask and you have the right to refuse? They would be at least partially liable for actions you took working for them.
For most of the jobs I have ever worked, it wouldn’t bother me to have coworkers on drugs. Any job that had the risk of injury for me that increased if my coworkers weren’t paying attention would be a different story though.
For the same reason employers dont have access to your medical record (at least in most countries). The “employment game” is not a fair game, the possible employer is in a dominating position. If they were left to their own devices, you’d have to give in your credit situation and “confess your sexuality” as well. That’s why, in most countries with at least basic labor laws, some things are put off the table for employers’ scrutiny.
I can understand specific public services requesting them (especially law enforcement jobs), somehow this seems to have extended to possible risks job (that I can understand but it does sound a lot like a foot in the door thing), now any company can ask for one? Good luck on your interview if you refuse to take the test (and this is the reason why it shouldnt be something employers have the right to ask, you’re just in no position to refuse).
First time in my life that I hear about private companies having the right to do this. I really dont know if they are legal in my country. From the basic net search it seems they arent (though there’s apparently some shitty company selling “home-kits”, more destined for parents wanting to check their kids).
In the US, it’s quite common (particularly for crappier jobs, actually.) Wal-Mart, for example.
NEW THREAD COMING: You have to have a prescription for drugs?
Since the 80s.
I dont say this often, but reading this, I can’t help but say I’m glad to be living in France.
I would like to see a cite for both of these claims.
I think the first has to be pure bullshit. There is no way a company is going to falsify your test results to protect your privacy. They might choose to include some kind of statement in a report like, “… the subject presented an apparently valid prescription for a medication which would in fact give a positive test result”. But falsify the results? They could open themselves up to major liability, and lose every customer they had if it was known they did that.
As to the second, some law firm “analyzed” this? So what? Has any court ever ruled that way? Having your pain relieved by a pain killer is certainly being “under the influence” of the drug whether or not your driving is objectively impaired. I have serious doubts whether any law is written so narrowly as to distinguish between two possible states of being under the influence of an opiate.
(My bolding).
It would depend how the test was worded. If they are supposed to report any non-prescribed drugs then they’d be completely fine presenting a negative result for non-prescription drugs.
It’s extremely unlike that a drug screening would be able to identify a specific prescription drug. They are looking for broad classes like “opiates”, and there could be any number of drugs, legal or illegal, that would trigger a positive result. They might be asked, later, by an employer, to do additional testing to verify that it was the specific drug claimed by the subject – supposing the employer didn’t reject the person out of hand because of the first results.
My skepticism remains high. I worked for a company that did testing like this, and they administered very specific tests according to contract. It would be a very exceptional company that contracted to order a different set of tests based on a pre-screening questionnaire to the subjects. It would be much cheaper and easier to run them through the same regimen, and bring back the relatively few people who didn’t fit (or toss them aside for reasons like others have mentioned above).