Manager's Journal: Sniffing Out Drug Abusers Is No Quick Fix
The statistics on the enormous costs of employee drug abuse are well known (at least $70 billion per year, according to December 1985 testimony before the House Labor Subcommittee on Health and Safety). Management is under pressure to reduce productivity losses, turnover, insurance costs and the risk of lawsuits for personal and property damage caused by drug-impaired workers. Management also is under sales pressure from a growing cadre of laboratories, test-kit manufacturers and consultants who extol the virtues of testing. A common argument is the following: "Your competitors are starting to require drug tests. If you don't, their work force will be clean and you will end up with all the junkies."</br></br>Many companies that have implemented widespread drug-testing programs, however, have learned that there is a downside to testing. They have experienced the protests of employees and civil libertarians and have watched the proliferation of lawsuits alleging invasion of privacy, defamation and other legal theories. A Texas railroad employee was awarded $200,000 in damages when his employer misreported the results of a drug test. Numerous other cases are pending.</br></br>Is there a middle ground? Can safety and efficiency be protected without invading the privacy of applicants and employees?</br></br>A growing number of companies have concluded that drug testing should be the least important part of a comprehensive drug-abuse program. The starting point is a drug-awareness program to educate managers, supervisors and employees about the dangers and signs of drug abuse. The second part of the program is an effective employee-assistance program (EAP). Rehabilitation is preferable to punishment or dismissal (at least for initial or nonserious offenses) because it encourages employees to seek help voluntarily, improves labor relations and is cost-effective by restoring valuable employees to productive status. More than one company that heedlessly adopted a "screen and fire" policy on drugs had second thoughts after discovering traces of drugs in some of their most productive employees.</br></br>There may be a place for drug testing in a company's drug-abuse program, but there are limits to the effectiveness of testing. To begin with, the accuracy of some drug tests varies widely, and the test results are often unacceptable even when performed by professional laboratories. Last year the Centers for Disease Control published the results of a 10-year study of laboratory testing for amphetamines, barbiturates, cocaine, codeine, methadone and morphine. Virtually all of the laboratories in the study had unacceptably high error rates.