Doreen, have you always been this brilliant?
Yes, that is EXACTLY what I was getting at.
Ah, but you see, that’s the problem. These tests measured CAPABILITY, not drug use. That’s exactly the point and exactly why they aren’t politically useful and therefore not pushed the way drug tests are.
They were tests of reflex and reaction time, essentially metered video games IIRC. They would test whether an individual was, at the beginning of the day, in shape to (e.g.) operate heavy machinery. Wouldn’t matter if they’d been drinking or drugging, stayed up all night with a sick kid or fighting with their sigO, were distracted due to illness or prescription medication, or whatever.
I don’t remember the cost - I think they were fairly equivalent. It’s been a while since I heard about them, probably due to lack of demand. They were originated back when drug testing was first becoming popular and highly visible - y’know, when it was expensive and unreliable.
But, they measured actual ABILITY to do the job rather than looked for drug use that might or might not be relevant to the work situation. Quite a concept if your intent is to improve workplace safety, but worthless for many of the purposes that drug testing serves. And never of any interest to the criminal justice system, which may be why you’ve not heard of it.
But, back to the OP…
I’d have to agree with even sven - to me, ‘natural consequences’ are things like the effects of gravity if you jump off a cliff, not the results of arbitrary politics. Predictable consequences is better, but I still have some problems with it; I haven’t quite got my finger on why yet. In this particular discussion, the most appropriate phrase I’ve thought of is ‘legal consequence’, which is IMO much more accurate and to the point.
OK, this is what you seem to be saying (let me know if I’ve misunderstood, as that may be the problem):
First, making any attempt whatsoever to escape legal consequences is always absolutely wrong. The validity, rationality and justice of those laws is immaterial; if you break the law, you should always accept the consequences without hesitation. The validity, rationality and justice of the legal consequences is immaterial - you took the chance, so live with it. The specific personal situation also does not have any bearing on the matter whatsoever.
Second, accepting (much less requesting) any assistance in your efforts to avoid the consequences is also reprehensible. Again, there are no excuses or possible extenuating circumstances.
Third, involving minor children is even worse. It is totally irrelevant whether this involvement will harm the child or your relationship/standing of authority with them, or in fact, if they are even aware of their involvement. In addition, any harm caused to the child by your choice to be ‘ethical’ is also perfectly acceptable.
Is that a fair assessment of your position? If not, can you explain it more clearly to me?
doreen:
You are making the same mistake that wring was making. There is no contradiction concerning disciplining your child for breaking a window and avoiding discipline yourself for drug use unless you believe that drug use is wrong. I assume that the parent in the example does not. If he did then this whole ethics argument is silly.
2sense, I wasn’t comparing the drug use to the broken window, I was comparing the deception in each case. If it’s wrong for him to deceive me about the window to avoid punishment, it’s wrong for me to be deceptive (pass off another’s urine as my own) to avoid being fired. It’s irrelevant whether drug use is wrong from the user’s point of view.After all, my son may have done nothing wrong to break the window ( or at least it may not have been wrong in his mind-he sees nothing wrong with playing ball in the house).I personally don’t care who uses what drugs, how often or how much as long as it doesn’t impact on others. I don’t think most jobs should require drug tests,but some should under,at least some circumstances ( and those should include alcohol as well}
My problem ( and I think wring’s) is not so much with the drugs, as the deception.To use a non-drug example, one of the rules of my job is that I can only have a second job under certain conditions and with permission. Moonlighting without permission is not in itself wrong,however, I agreed to the condition when I took the job.If I objected, I was free not to take the job.If I choose to moonlight anyway, am I now justified in using deception to avoid being fired? Can I deceive anyone to avoid consequences for things I don’t believe are wrong?If I think I’ve been so overworked lately that I’m entitled to an extra day off, can I lie on my timesheet to avoid losing a day of leave time?
You’ve been working at a company for the past few years with no problems. You show up promptly at 9 AM, do your job well, and leave no sooner than 5 PM. Everyone seems to like you. However, you’re Catholic - and your area is strongly Protestant and the people in charge have nothing but hate for Catholics (perhaps you live in Northern Ireland).
One day, your boss comes around and says, “We all like you, but I’ve heard rumors that you might be Catholic. I’m sure you know we don’t approve of that Pope-worshiping crap here, and we’d have to fire you, but I just thought I’d ask to make sure: Are you a Catholic?” (For the sake of this question, imagine that it would be legal to fire you for your religion.)
Losing this job would mean being unable to support your family. It might also mean that your employer tells all his employer friends about you, and you’d find it pretty hard to find a job at all. A few of your friends from work are Catholics, and they suggest you lie - they do it themselves, and have had no trouble.
Is it wrong for you to lie? Are you avoiding responsibility by choosing the answer that would let you keep your job and support your family, or should you admit the truth and get ready to move?
I think you meant this for wring, but I’m going to reply, too.
We were talking about job consequences, not legal ones. As far as I know, there are no legal consequences anywhere ( certainly not in NY) for simply using drugs, (possession is another story, as is driving under the influence of drugs) unless you are on parole, probation,some other form of supervised release or are incarcerated.
But since you brought up legalities, no, every attempt to avoid the ultimate consequences of breaking the law is not wrong.There’s nothing wrong with hiring a good attorney,or with pleading not guilty, or refusing to help the police.There’s also nothing wrong with pleading guilty in exchange for a lighter sentence or making sure the judge knows about any mitigating circumstances in hopes of leniency or having your lawyer argue that the law is invalid or unjust. There is something wrong with committing perjury or tampering with evidence or bribing someone.
Even in terms of job consequences, all attempts to avoid them wouldn’t be wrong. If say, you’re notified ahead of time ( don’t laugh, when I got hired I knew two weeks ahead of time when my test would be) or can predict when the test will be and can stop indulging long enough to produce a clean sample, that’s a different situation than passing off someone elses as your own.
doreen:
I think I see your point now. You mislike the deception involved.
I don’t think that lying is automatically wrong. I consider an employer asking for a drug test to be duress. A person’s income is on the line.
Why should a person give up a good paying job just because the company has some odd ideas about how their employees should spend their off-time?
I feel that duress is one of the situations where lying is not only permisable, but desirable.
Again your employer to employee/parent to child analogy is flawed. The relationships are different. A parent is responsible for the nuturing of the child while an employer is not. It doesn’t matter that the child thinks that breaking the window is OK. It is the job of the parent to teach them that it is not. Everything a child does is a parent’s responsibility. The employer is only responsible for the employee while they are on the clock and then only in limited ways.
BTW- Exactly how does a person go about using a controlled substance without possessing it first?
Mr2001, I just knew someone would come up with a hypothetical like that.I wouldn’t say it’s wrong to lie in that case, but I think there are significant differences between your hypothetical and the drug scenario.
1)Being Catholic is something you are, not something you do.You couldn’t stop being Catholic, even if you wanted to,just because it was a condition of your employment (you could stop practicing,but that wouldn’t change your beliefs.
2)Your hypothetical has this only coming up after a few years on the job. This may have been commonly true initially for drug testing, but not anymore. Companies that test employees usually test you before they hire you, so it doesn’t generally come as a surprise.
3)Your hypothetical implies that other employers will not hire Catholics,leaving the person unable to avoid the predicament entirely by taking a job without such a requirement.Not true in the drug scenario-all employers don’t do drug testing and some that do only do it for certain jobs ( for example, my husband’s former job tested truck drivers but not accountants,etc)or in certain situations ( my employer might test me, but only if they have reason to think I’m using-they can’t do random ones).
4)It assumes that when employer A fires you for being Catholic, he will tell all of the other employers.Not likely.Most employers will only give the dates of employment and say if the former employee is eligible for rehire-afraid of lawsuits.
I think a closer religious analogy is the following:
A person takes a job where it is required that employees be a particular religion ( say, Catholic),although being Catholic may or may not be necessary to actually do the job (for example, in a Catholic school).There are other jobs that don’t require that employees be Catholic .The person knows the requirement when hired, knows that participation in religious events will be expected (closest I could get to testing),but is never directly asked his or her religion.The person is either Catholic when hired and then converts to something else (similar to a person who begins drug use after being hired) or wasn’t Catholic to begin with (similar to someone who used before being hired)but didn’t mention it.The employer at some point asks about the employee’s religion - perhaps a lack of participation has been noticed.Telling the truth will not prevent the employee from getting another job,because the employer will only confirm dates of employment.I don’t think lying is justified in this situation.
Even with your hypothetical, it’s going to be difficult to explain to a child why your lie is acceptable, but his isn’t.It may be worth being a bad example if the only other option is starvation, but starvation isn’t the alternative in the drug scenario. The alternatives in that example are :
-
pass someone else’s urine off as your own
-
find a job that doesn’t require drug tests ( you don’t even need to get fired for this one)
-
stop using drugs
Somehow, I don’t see #1 as the best example to give children you’re presumably trying to raise to be honest,regardless of how you feel about drugs.
I agree with doreen on the Catholic analogy. She has spared me from composing my own response to that hypothetical!
I do think that people just have to accept the inevitabilities of what they do. Come on…don’t employers usually let you know that they will drug test? And if you take that job anyway…how stupid are you? And then you want to weasel out of the inevitible by getting your kid involved? What kind of crap is this? Shit or get off the pot - either decide that the drugs are more important, and choose an employer who does not drug test, or decide that the job is more important, and give up the drugs. Sometimes you just can’t have it all your way.
I agree with wring’s POV entirely.
2sense,
I don’t think lying is automatically wrong, but I don’t agree that drug testing is automatically duress.It’s one thing if you’ve been working somewhere and out of the blue they start drug testing.Then I would consider it duress. It’s another situation entirely if you took the job knowing that you would be subject to testing.
I don’t think I’m getting the parent-child thing across, so I’ll try one more time.Try to see it from the chhild’s point of view, not the parent’s.I can tell my son all I want to that he shouldn’t lie to avoid punishment.Doesn’t matter. If he sees me lie, then it must be okay. If I say his urine was mine because otherwise I would get fired, and I explain it to him by saying I don’t think there’s anything wrong with using drugs,he is not going to see anything wrong with lying to avoid punishment since he doesn’t see anything wrong with playing ball in the house.
Even if I see a difference, he won’t.
You can’t realistically use a drug without possessing it at least momentarily, but it’s not a separate crime to use it, and there’s really no way to get convicted of possession without some being recovered.
doreen:
I think we just disagree on the employment issue. I see no valid reason for an employer to decide whether or not to hire a person based on possible drug use. I agree that they may hire based on arbitrary conditions, but have no problem with a person pretending to meet them.
On the homefront, the way to resolve your dilemma is to teach the child that lying is not a black and white issue. There are some situations where it is appropriate and some where it is not. In fact, teaching a child that there are very few black and white issues would be most helpful for them.
I would agree with your drug conviction assertion if I believed that the police were honest.
Unfortunately, I know from personal experience that this is not always the case.
2sense.
I can think offhand of 2 areas where drug use is a valid concern even without safety issues- law enforcement and drug counseling.Since you see no problem with pretending to meet an employer’s requirements, can an employer also pretend to meet an employee’s requirements? That is, if I want a job which offers a month’s vacation yearly,or a pension, is it okay for the employer to pretend I’ll get it (to induce me to take the job) and then not give it to me, or can only the employee pretend? I don’t see any difference.After all, at the point of being hired, the employer and the employee both are free to reject the other’s conditions. Can an employee justifiably use a phony college degree to get a job that requires one, or is drug use the only arbitrary condition you feel this way about?
Yes, you can teach a child that there are few if any black and white issues.However, a child requires a certain level of maturity to understand that. You’re not going to get a three year old to understand that, and I wouldn’t bet on a ten year old either.
Abput the possession thing - OK I guess I should have qualified. Here goes - You can’t get convicted of possession without the police producing drugs that they claim to have recovered from you.My point wasn’t the honesty of the police (after all, if they’re dishonest enough you could get convicted even if you did nothing illegal), but rather that if the police arrested you for possession based on the fact that you were walking around high and therefore must have been in possession at some point, and didn’t at least claim to have recovered drugs from you,they wouldn’t get past the prosecutor,if they even got that far.
Wring, Im with you, buddy!
My dictionary, American Heritage, second college edition, defines responsibility as “something for which one is responsible; duty, obligation or burden”.
**2sense[b/] said “The parent is not avoiding responsibility. They are avoiding undesirable consequences”.
I have to disagree. When someone says “I take responsibility for this”, what are they saying? It is obvious that they mean “I will accept the possible consequences of this”.
In the example in the OP, the parent is avoiding resposibility, i.e. consequences, for his actions, and teaching the child to do the same. IMHO, this is the biggest problem in our society. People not taking personal responsibilty for their actions.
doreen:
I agree that law enforcement is a position where there would be a conflict for a drug user. The counseling postition I am less sure of. Counseling is concerned with ending the abuse of drugs rather than the use of them, correct? If so, then I don’t see the problem for a user. If not, then there would be but IMO the counseling is wrongheaded.
I don’t think that there are many situations where lying is tolerable if the falsehood is causing harm to the lyee. I certainly would have a problem with an employer who failed to pay an employee the amount promised; however, the employee is likely to notice the lack of vacation pay. My point about drug use is that it does not affect the employer and therefor is none of his business.
This question is an example of the fallacy of the false dilemma.
Drug use may not be the only condition I feel this way about but I can still feel that faking a college degree is wrong.
I have never considered it before but off the cuff I disagree that forging a college degree is tolerable.
Your possession argument was quite clear.
I understood it; I was merely adding a caveat.
Sorry spooje, I need to think more on the responsibility/consequences issue. That’s why I haven’t responded to doreen’s earlier point concerning this.
I see an easy solution, the parent doesen’t tell the child what he is using the urine for. Therefore the child is not involved.
2sense,
I didn’t mean the employee wasn’t paid for the vacation, I meant the employee wasn’t permitted to take the vacation,although he she/was told they would be able to as an inducement.But in general, do you feel either party can pretend to meet the other’s arbitrary requirements, or can only the employee pretend? Why make agreements at all if I can pretend to meet your requirements and you can pretend to meet mine?
Regarding the college degree- I didn't mean phony necessarily as forged. There are places that will give you a degree from a college that exists in the form of a billing office and a mailing office-no courses, no teachers,no accreditation.For many jobs, a college degree is an arbitrary requirement ( it's pretty much arbitrary if any degree is acceptable).If you see pretending to meet this arbitrary requirement differently than pretending to take a drug test, I'm trying to figure out why.Both requirements are arbitrary and neither necessarily harms the employer if you don't meet it. Buying a piece of paper that says you have a college degree when in fact you don't is not wrong in itself (just as recreationally using drugs is not wrong in itself}. It would only become wrong if you tried to pass it off as a real one.Glad you guys can trust your kids urine.
But don’t you think that the message the parent is sending the child in this case is a) drug use is okay as long as you don’t get caught, b) avoid the consequences of your actions, and c) lying/cheating is okay (even though he’s not lying to the child, he’s still lying to his employers or whoever?)
Wow, leave for a day, and things progress
** Doreen ** did an admirable job with continuing my position. Couldn’t agree more. Regarding “legal consequences” - I agree that we are allowed to ** defend ** ourselves and are protected from ** self incrimination **, which means we can hire a good attorney, take a plea bargain, refuse to answer questions or testify. But you are also correct that to tamper with evidence, bribe, perjury would be wrong. The falsification of the specimin is (for a criminal court) both tampering, and perjury (of a kind).
** Mr2001 ** others have admirably dealt with your analogy.
** redtail23 ** You do seem to have a better handle on my position. sorry for the confusion. Re: the “capability” testing vs. “usage” tho’ - I thought the testing you talked of would measure if the person was currently “under the influence” - that is, drugs currently in the bloodstream etc. this “capability” is a whole 'nother ball game. Do you establish a baseline for someone’s “capabilty” first? I’ve known some drunks who could still actually perform certain aspects of their jobs, but their reaction times are slower than they would be NOT under the influence. This would still be an issue to me.
** yosimiteabe ** and ** spooje ** thanks for the support as well. (spooje, in point of order, tho’ I’m a ** “buddette” **)
** Asmadeus ** the fact the child would not know you are doing wrong is immaterial.
** bare ** actually, several times when I was running the correction center and a client was surprised about a positive urinalysis report, I heard later the “damn that kid” line was uttered.
and ** Trouble again **, even going past the issue of “if drug use is wrong or right” are the other issues you point out, - lying to avoid the ** predictable ** consequences of your actions should be considered wrong. And to involve your child in this subterfuge is wrong.
To repeat: If you don’t want the predictable outcomes, don’t do the action.
Regarding ideas about coercion by the employer. Not all employers do drug testing. Big clue: if you’re asked for a urine sample as a pre employment condition, and don’t want to be asked for them later on, don’t take the job. You have a moral right, I believe to not subject yourself to that, if you don’t wish to (and assuming you haven’t placed yourself in the position of being in the CJ system, where all your rights are suspended).
** Some ** fields have required drug testing across the board (law enforcement, many occupations in the transportation field for examples). If you object to employer drug tests, don’t go into those fields.
You do NOT have a moral right to work for every employer out there. You can choose not to work for employers with drug testing policies, yes, even if that means you won’t be able to work in law enforcement.
Having failed to reconcile the responsiblity question for myself, and since no white knight came to my rescue, I will concede that a person is avoiding responsibility by decieving the drug tests. I still have no problem with the ethics of the situation as there is no harm done.
Situations where harm is done, by employer or employee are a different matter, IMO.
On topic family anecdote:
My mother recently retired after many years working for a company rather than take a lesser position. In her discussions about this with her boss she detailed what she would state in her application for unemployment. Her boss agreed that the statements were appropriate. This led my mother to believe that there would be no challenge to her collecting the money. Later my mother found out that her boss was challenging the payment. The boss never stated that she would not challenge the case but I feel that this nonlie is worse than the lies I discussed above. My mother was counting on that money and now she is unsure whether she will recieve it. She has made plans for an extended vacation ( she is now at the Grand Canyon ) and the case will not be resolved for some time. Basically her future is in limbo to some degree. She has been harmed by the underhanded actions ( which are perfectly legal ) of her former employer.
I hope this gives you a clearer view of my position.