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      Drug testing does not protect public safety. It serves mainly to
      identify and ban cannabis consumers from the workforce, or
      sanction them at the workplace or schools.

Drug Testing primarily targets people who use marijuana, as the other 
drugs which are tested dissipate very quickly. Marijuana may remain 
detectable for up to 90 days -- long after the effects are felt. Often 
people who have never done any drugs will fail a drug test as a result 
of false positives and inaccuracies within the testing industry itself.

Drug testing has nothing to do with impairment and everything to do with 
discrimination and is a violation of our human rights.

Potential ramifications of drug testing are loss of jobs or reputation, 
loss of benefits and pensions, loss of custody of children, denial of 
transplants, and revocation of probation or parole &emdash; landing more 
people in jail (thus, increasing the prison industrial system).

The National Academy of Sciences formed the Committee on Drug Use in the 
Workplace -- a team of nationally recognized experts -- to study the 
effectiveness of drug testing. They spent three years collecting, 
studying and synthesizing every significant study on the impact of drug 
use in the workplace. It was published in book form in 1994 as Under the 
Influence: Drugs and the American Workforce. Much of the information in 
this report was derived from this study.

Employers have relied on information provided by drug testing promoters 
who have an inherent conflict of interest on the topic. Drug Testing 
products and services are now a multi-billion dollar industry which rely 
on the magnification of the severity of drug-related problems in the 
workplace and extolling the benefits of drug testing as a solution. They 
market drug testing with the promise that they will improve productivity 
and profits. They use bogus studies to arrive at estimates of "costs of 
lost productivity." The Research Triangle Institute researchers "found 
no difference in the annual incomes of households with and without 
current marijuana users or with users of other drugs."

According the American Management Association, only 8 percent of 
companies with drug testing programs had performed any cost-benefit 
analysis.

The NAS stated, " the data�do not provide clear evidence of the 
deleterious effects of drugs other than alcohol on safety and other job 
performance indicators."

Researchers found that workers testing positive at the time of hire were 
no more likely than workers testing negative to become involved in an 
accident. The NAS claimed," Illicit drugs contribute little to the 
overall rate of industrial accidents." This is because most workers who 
use illicit drugs never use them at work. And, when they do so, it is in 
a way that does not affect their work performance.

In comparing the residual effect of occasional off-duty stimulant use, 
they found it to be no more profound than the effects that occur 
following "sleep deprivation in the absence of drug use."

Moderate use of illicit drugs by workers during off-duty hours was no 
more likely than moderate off-duty alcohol use to compromise workplace 
safety.

Drug testing does not test impairment.

As a result, drug tests mainly identify drug users who may have used a 
drug on the weekend, as they might use alcohol, and who are not under 
the influence of a drug while at work or when tested. It takes several 
hours for drug metabolites to appear in urine, so drug tests may miss 
drug users who are under the influence of drugs at the time the test is 
given.

Using the Kaiser Permanente data, researchers found no significant 
differences between health care costs for marijuana users to non-users.

Drug testing deters highly qualified workers from applying. They may be 
users who do not want to give up their use, or people who are opposed to 
giving up their privacy, or are civil libertarians. Many employers in 
high tech industries have discontinued drug testing programs as they 
limit their ability to hire qualified workers.

Drug testing programs impact morale and job satisfaction finding urine 
collection to be "degrading and demeaning" and humiliating.

At the time of collection, workers fill out a form to reveal personal 
information about medications they may be taking. This information can 
be used against them even for legally prescribed medications.

Firms with pre-employment testing, compared with [High tech] firms with 
no drug testing at all, scored 16 percent lower on productivity 
measures. "Companies that relate to employees positively with a high 
degree of trust are able to obtain more effort and loyalty in return."


      Alternatives to Drug Testing

Rather than submit a person to drug testing, why not use the traditional 
method of checking references to find out about an potential employee?

Supervisors need to be trained to identify, confront, or refer impaired 
employees to Employee Assistance Programs or other intervention programs.

Impairment testing not only detects people who are impaired by drugs and 
alcohol, but also by sleep deprivation stress, fatigue, emotional 
problems including anxiety, sickness or other health problems, over-the 
counter medications, prescription medications, or those who are 
otherwise not able to perform safely. Impairment due to illicit drugs is 
statistically much less likely than impairment from other factors. These 
tests, once administered, can improve safety far better than drug tests 
can. They are not discriminatory. Rather, they measure everyone equally 
by their performance which is the most significant factor in employment.

Denying an addict employment through drug testing is also a sure way to 
keep him or her using drugs and alcohol (making the addicts life more 
unbearable with jail time, monetary fines, criminal records, and 
reducing odds of improving life).

There is a growing number of people who will suffer when they are 
falsely labeled drug users by the inaccuracies of drug testing. People 
will unjustly be denied a driver's license, evicted from their homes, 
and be denied their rights and government benefits

Anybody being treated for depression, anxiety, heart disease, ulcers, 
insomnia, diabetes, or high blood pressure may be 'screened out' and 
denied employment as a result of drug testing. This has nothing to do 
with marijuana use. It is related to the medical information gathered at 
the drug testing site.

Contamination on glassware has been shown to cause a 3 to 5 percent 
false positive rate.

The majority of labs don't follow any guidelines Their accuracy rate is 
about 82%.

The bulk of errors could be attributed to inadequate personnel, poor 
management, broken chain of custody, faulty maintenance, and faulty 
transmissions of reports and records, rather than the tests themselves. 
No government or industry agency is responsible for monitoring the 
quality of work done at these labs.

The false positive rate has been shown to vary widely from 0.8 to 60%. 
Despite having a 4-34% false positive rate, the EMIT has been the most 
widely used immunological assay for detection of drugs of abuse in 
urine. Back up tests are only required for federal employees. More 
sophisticated tests require more training of lab technicians. 
Inadequately trained techs cause more false positives.

Most drugs, including cocaine and marijuana, bind and incorporate into 
the hair of African Americans 10 to 50 times greater than drugs are 
incorporated into the hair of Caucasians. Hair testing is extremely poor 
at identifying current drug use because the maximum amount of drug is 
deposited one to two months after drug use and is often not detectable 
until weeks after use. Hair can be contaminated by second-hand smoke. 
People have reported testing positive up to six months after use in hair 
testing!

This is unreasonable search and seizure, threatening the 4th amendment 
protections against such abuse. This treats people like they are guilty 
until proven innocent, reversing the presumption of innocence which is 
the basis of our democratic society. Drug testing also makes individuals 
lose all control over who has access to their confidential medical 
information.

Marijuana tests positive 14 to 30 days after use.

Discriminates against medical marijuana patients.

If it is inaccurate and it does not test for impairment or performance, 
then what good is it? If impairment is really a concern, there is a far 
less expensive, accurate, computerized, performance test available, 
which would test for that.

Drug War Facts: A congressional committee estimated that the cost of 
each positive in governmental testing was $77,000.

Since drug tests test for marijuana, it may cause people to use harder 
drugs that go through the system faster (like alcohol and LSD that are 
not tested)

Enployers may lose workers from false positives that could be attributed 
to common foods, over-the counter preparations, and prescription 
medications.

In a famous drug testing study, employees who tested positive at Georgia 
Power had a higher promotion rate than the company average, and workers 
that tested positive only for marijuana were absent 30% less often than 
the average.

Th drug testing industry is comprised of manufacturers of equipment and 
chemicals, laboratories, medical review officers, consultants, and 
lobbyists.

Insurance companies use "after accident" tests to deny people benefits.

Despite the fact that alcohol is the most prevalent drug causing work 
related accidents and that alcohol addiction is much more costly to 
employers than all illicit drugs combined, the focus is on illicit drugs 
in the workplace.

There is no differentiation between responsible use and abuse.

People call us regularly, complaining that despite a commendable work 
record with years of responsible job performance, they are being fired 
and losing their pensions because of a drug test. This is not right. 
People are losing their jobs and pensions based on false positives. We 
know of a man who was sent back to prison for a year for eating a 
sandwich with poppy seed bread (without the courtesy of a re-test) which 
tested positive for opiates. Twenty years ago, the population was not 
subjected to this invasion of their privacy, and the workplace survived 
nicely. It is not necessary now. If an employer can not tell that 
someone is not performing their job, then they have no reason to test. 
The American people are supposed to live in a free country. We are not 
owned by our employers (that went out with slavery) or our schools, so 
we should not be subjected to this kind of "arbitrary interference" with 
our privacy. It is unconstitutional!

Just say "NO" to drug testing!


      Questions and Answers about drug testing

Q: Don't employers have the right to expect their employees not to be 
high on drugs on the job?

A: Of course they do. Employers have the right to expect their employees 
not to be high, stoned, drunk, or asleep. Job performance is the bottom 
line: If you cannot do the work, employers have a legitimate reason for 
firing you. But urine tests do not measure job performance.

Q: If you don't use drugs, you have nothing to hide -- so why object to 
testing?

A: Innocent people do have something to hide: their private life. The 
"right to be left alone" is, in the words of the late Supreme Court 
Justice Louis Brandeis, "the most comprehensive of rights and the right 
most valued by civilized men." Analysis of a person's urine can disclose 
many details about that person's private life other than drug use. It 
can tell an employer whether an employee or job applicant is being 
treated for a heart condition, depression, epilepsy or diabetes. It can 
also reveal whether an employee is pregnant. This can affect one's 
chances of getting hired or not.

Urine tests are body searches, and they are an unprecedented invasion of 
privacy. The standard practice, in administering such tests, is to 
require employees to urinate in the presence of a witness to guard 
against specimen tampering.

In the words of one judge, that is "an experience which even if 
courteously supervised can be humiliating and degrading." Noted a 
federal judge, as he invalidated a drug-testing program for municipal 
fire-fighters, "Drug testing is a form of surveillance, albeit a 
technological one."

Q: Are drug tests reliable?

A: No, the drug screens used by most companies are not reliable. These 
tests yield false positive results at least 10 percent, and possibly as 
much as 30 percent, of the time. Experts concede that the tests are 
unreliable.

References: Drug Testing: A Bad Investment (ACLU, 1999); Urine Trouble 
by Kent Hotorf, MD (1998)

FCDA / Family Council on Drug Awareness

PO Box 1716, El Cerrito, CA 94530 USA Phone / Fax: 510-215-8326 o 
www.fcda.org <http://www.fcda.org> o chris@fcda.org



-- 
To live outside the law, you must be honest... 
(Absolutely Sweet Marie - Blonde on Blonde - 1966)