When Privacy and Company Prerogatives Clash;Publisher's Midnight Drug Raid' Involved No Warrant or Police Series: Testing the Limits: detecting drugs in the workplace Series Number: Second of three articles
One January night in 1986, Thompson Hughes Lang, president and publisher of the Albuquerque Journal, went beyond publishing the news. He created it.</br></br>Shortly after midnight, a helicopter clattered over the offices of New Mexico's largest daily newspaper, shining its spotlight on the Journal's brand-new $40 million building. Security guards and two drug-detection dogs entered the plant, heading for the production areas where an undercover informant had secretly tape-recorded conversations with Journal employees.</br></br>Lang watched from a glass-enclosed catwalk above the production floor as the dogs sniffed around a mailroom conveyor belt and secu- rity guards led employees suspected of drug activity to restrooms for testing. Refusal, the employees were told, was cause for firing.</br></br>No police were involved. The security guards had no search warrant. No one was handcuffed or taken to jail. Nonetheless, The Albuquerque Tribune reported that afternoon on Page 3: "Publisher Nabs 18 in Drug Sweep." The Journal's account the following day, on Page 9, called it a "drug raid."</br></br>Lang's approach, radical compared to some, illustrates how far companies can go in trying to stamp out drug use in the workplace. Unlike the local police, who are supposed to follow certain constitutional principles, Lang found that few laws restricted his actions. "When we did {the raid}, it was fairly unpopular, primarily because of the thought of the invasion of privacy," Lang said. "But once you get over that, I think people see it as reasonable. Reasonable by the fact that you wouldn't want somebody injured at work."