AFAIK, candidates for public office are not subjected to drug screening. Why not? After all, your average Jo[e] has to pee in a cup before getting a job in a lot of places these days. Atheletes all over the world are tested for substances on a regular basis. Don’t we deserve to know that the folks making really big decisions aren’t smoking pot, or whatever?
Oh, and once politicians get elected to federal positions, it should be like the big leagues: random testing!!
It seems fair to me; if they can do it to us, they should suffer the same.
Our leaders should be required to take drugs. I’d lock 'em all in a big room dosed to the gills on LSD and MDMA, and tell them they’re not coming out until they sort everything.
Not that I’m advocating illegal activities, BTW, purely a harmless daydream.
Personally, I don’t feel anyone should be required to take pre-employment drug tests. Something about it makes me think: “Guilty until proven innocent. . . . Prove you’re not a crack-head before we’ll let you operate a cash register!” I’ve turned down jobs based on this requirement, because I don’t think I would want to work in a place which treats their employees like criminals and makes them prove their innocence in a degrading fashion.
I have no problem with for-cause testing. If someone appears to be blitzed, you can’t have them operating a fork lift, after all. But if an employee comes to work sober and does his job well, what he does in his off hours is no one’s business but his own.
So, no, I don’t think politicians should be subjected to drug testing.
I have no problem with people in important dangerous jobs being required to have drugs testing. Like police, firefighters, medical staff, etc. I therefore think it would be a sound idea to have similar testing on non-elected political and judicial employees.
There would be a problem for elected officials, as if the testing occured after election it would potentially counter-act the democratic process. For elected positions I would prefer to see pre-election drug testing on all candidates with the results being made freely available to the electorate so they can choose whether to let these results alter their vote.
I would also expect such drug testing not just to test forillegal drugs, but alcohol consumption and prescription drug missuse as well.
I think drug testing for people is wrong. For politicians it’s okay. Should be de rigeur. I should be able to drugtest any boss of mine and not the other way around. 
In my company, drug testing became the policy because Workers’ Compensation essentially penalizes companies that do not enact a “Drug Free Workplace.” The difference in rates is to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars.
If a Senator trips and falls as she walks across the Senate floor, is that covered by WC? If so, they should have pre-employment, random, and mandatory claim testing to keep costs down. That’s the excuse the government has for making us do it. (Most companies can’t afford to spend tens of thousands of dollars just on principle.)
Because the Supreme Court has determined that such a requirement is unconstitutional
Sua
I agree; I’m against drug testing but we shouldn’t be hypocritical about it. Test everyone, or test no one. I think a druggie can do a lot more damage in Congress than in a 7-11.
Ayup. Testing the high school chess club, perfectly okay!
Testing the elected officials spending your money on things like testing the high school chess club, that’s downright unconstitutional!
I’ll settle for a truth-telling requirement: anything a politician says or writes while in office must be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
What Fridgemagnet said. If only, if only.
Wow. That’s amazing! So, they don’t believe that making decisons–like going to war, for example–doesn’t qualify as a substantial special need? It’s not that I’m pro-drug testing, I just don’t think holders of high offices should be exempt.
Well, it’s sort of nice to see that Rehnquist was a dissenting vote
Wow. That’s amazing! So, they don’t believe that making decisons–like going to war, for example–doesn’t qualify as a substantial special need? It’s not that I’m pro-drug testing, I just don’t think holders of high offices should be exempt.
Well, it’s sort of nice to see that Rehnquist was a dissenting vote.
Interesting. The Fourth Amendment applies because the employer is the government, right? Does that mean there’s no drug testing for low level government jobs either? (I’ve never applied for one.)
Or–I don’t know the specifics of the law–could the problem have been that they were testing candidates, people who were running for office but weren’t yet government employees, so the state wasn’t actually employing them at the time of the test?
I think I’d trust my congressman more if he was on acid. In fact we should drug test them make sure they’ve done at least 100 hits of acid, otherwise they can’t serve.
To answer the OP… depends on the method of testing. No one should be subject to drug testing unless they’re in a position to put others in danger (like pilots), and no one should be subject to past use testing at all when there’s a reasonable method to test for present intoxication. It’s none of your employer’s business what you do when you’re off the clock.
Now, I think it’s fair to say most elected officials are in a position to put others in danger, but candidates aren’t. Once someone is elected, I guess it’d be reasonable to test them for intoxication before they declare war, vote on a bill, or make other weighty decisions - as long as you’re testing for drugs that could influence their decision making, including alcohol, not just illegal drugs. Personally, I don’t think it’s a big enough issue to worry about.
On preview, I think mswas might be on something. Er, on to something. Many of the politicians who set our drug policy haven’t used drugs themselves (I assume), and as a result they have a skewed sense of what those drugs can do and how dangerous they are. For example, no one who had ever smoked pot could’ve been swayed by the arguments in the 1930’s that marijuana turned regular folks into violent rapists.
And the ones who have done them keep it quiet and generally won’t stick their necks out in favor of saner drug policies. That may be an equally large problem.