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Issue of the Week: Business Is Good
by Bob Kolasky
Thursday, October 14, 1999
Comments: 80 posts
Peter O'Connell is proud to tell you he works in a "growth industry." A number
of his company's clients are nursing homes. His company provides services to
companies chasing government contracts and to a major luxury-boat builder. And
it frequently does business in schools.
O'Connell is in the booming high-tech field, correct? Or maybe he sells
pharmaceuticals? Perhaps, insurance? Think again. O'Connell's rapidly growing
endeavor is Rapid Drug Testing {{http://www.rapiddrug.com/}} , a drug-screening
business located in the Florida Keys.
For $22 a test, Rapid Drug Testing provides large businesses and small, as well
as schools, a full-service drug-screening process in order to test potential
employees, full-time workers and student-athletes, among others. The test,
according to O'Connell, Rapid Drug's vice president, "is just like a home-
pregnancy test."
The drug testing
industry is booming
It tests for marijuana, cocaine, opiates, PCP, amphetamines, methamphetamines,
barbituates, benzodiazepines and TCL. Results can be ascertained in three
minutes, and in the event of a positive -- which O'Connell says occurs 3% to 5%
of the time in the workplace -- Rapid Drug will provide access to a laboratory
to confirm the test results, as well as to a medical-review officer who will
determine whether the drug use is of the illicit nature.
As with much of the drug-testing industry, O'Connell's business is booming.
"Employers are motivated by the bottom line," O'Connell. says. "It makes hard-
dollar sense to have a drug-free workplace." He offers two reasons: First,
insurance companies that offer workmen's compensation insurance give a
significant discount to companies that have a testing policy in place. Second,
and more obviously, workers who are not on drugs are more effective -- and drug
tests keep workers off drugs.
Therefore, to O'Connell and others in this industry, drug testing is an
essential part of being in business.
Making the grade in the workplace
Businesses seem to agree. Spurred by claims (some say unsubstantiated) that
drug use costs businesses more than $100 billion a year in lost productivity,
many companies are embracing the practice of workplace drug testing. The
American Management Association reports that, as of 1996, about 81% of their
70,000 member companies had testing programs. And the recently released study,
"Worker Drug Use and Workplace Policies and Programs," compiled by the
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
{{http://www.samhsa.gov/OAS/NHSDA/A-11/TOC.htm}} (SAMHSA) using data from the
1994 and 1997 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse found that, in 1997, 49%
of workers ages 18 to 49, reported being tested (up from 44% in 1994).
Workplace drug tests generally come in four types. The most prevalent are drug
tests as a condition of employment or that occur as part of the interview or
hiring process, in which corporations subject potential employees to drug
screening to ensure that they are not regular drug users.
Another frequently used approach to testing is post-incident testing, when,
following an accident, workplaces force the employee to undergo a drug test.
Less frequent, but still common, are random drug tests. And the rarest of drug
tests are those for cause, i.e. when an employee's performance has diminished
and an employer, suspecting drug use, tests the employee.
The testing regime, in all four forms, appears to be working. The SAMHSA survey
found that "there is a correlation of the increased frequency of drug testing
and the decreased presence of drug use," says Dr. Westley Clark, the director
of SAMHSA's Center for Substance Abuse Treatment.
Specifically, according to the survey, drug use among full-time workers ages 18
to 49 has dropped by more than half since 1985. That year, 17.5% of those
surveyed were using illicit drugs. By 1997, that number was down to 7.7%.
Clearly, something happened to cause such a significant shift, and the most
logical explanation is the proliferation of drug testing. In 1987, according to
the American Management Association report, 21.5% of member companies had
testing programs; by 1996, it was 81.1%. Patrick Dixon, the British author of
The Truth on Drugs, has written that the rush for employers to test their
employees has contributed a "spectacular success" to America's war on drugs.
But success is relative, and not everyone agrees with Dixon's assertion that
drug testing in the workplace has succeeded spectacularly. Drug use might be
down, but at what cost? Is it worth the price of trust between employer and
employee? Is it worth the loss of the civil liberties of employees -- drug
users or not? Is it worth the financial burden it places on corporations? And
if so, should the use of drug tests continue to proliferate in other aspects of
American society?
A misguided practice
Lewis Maltby has a simple answer to all those questions: no. Maltby is the
author of a recently released study by the American Civil Liberties Union,
"Drug Testing: A Bad Investment,"
{{http://www.aclu.org/news/1999/n090199a.html}} In it, he argued that employers
who are so gung-ho about using drug tests are making a mistake.
"Employers are drug testing their employees because they think it will make the
workplace safer and more productive," Maltby says. "There is no evidence that
it does so."
Maltby argues that the proliferation of drug testing is built on a completely
misguided assumption. "Because drug testing does not measure what we think it
measures [drug use in the workplace], it is not particularly effective," he
says. "All a positive drug test means is that somewhere, sometime, an employee
was using drugs in the past two weeks -- and that was probably offsite on the
weekend. There is no evidence that such an employee is any less safe, or
productive, on Monday morning."
Maltby released the ACLU study in the hopes that it would influence businesses
to rethink their policies, but he acknowledges that doing so will be a tough
mission.
Growth industry, part II
Libertarian author/humorist P.J. O'Rourke once wrote, "If we're looking for the
source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs; we should test them
for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power." In the absence of such a
test being developed, however, it appears that businesses have settled on the
deployment of drug tests to curtail troubles.
And U.S. citizens as a whole seem quite content to sacrifice some of their
privacy for the added benefits they perceive workplace drug tests will bring
them. There is little outcry over workplace testing, as evidenced by the SAMHSA
survey. "Our research found that opposed to a few years ago, people are more
receptive to working for companies with drug-test policies, even drug users,"
Clark says. "Instead of debating drug testing, users instead are trying to find
a way to beat the system."
If Clark is right, then perhaps the drug-screening business is not the only
growth industry associated with this debate. If you search for the words "drug
testing" at Yahoo!, you will find that in addition to a myriad of related
information, a company has bought the rights to display banner ads associated
with those keywords. The company? Urine Luck, which offers a "complete line of
detoxifying products."
Apparently, businesses that can help individuals beat drug tests have a strong
future as well.
Bob Kolasky is the managing editor of IntellectualCapital.com. His e-mail
address is [EMAIL PROTECTED]
{{<End>}}
{{<Begin>}}
Drawing the Line on Drug Testing
by Ethan A. Nadelmann
Thursday, October 14, 1999
http://www.intellectualcapital.com/issues/issue310/item6817.asp
Toward Drug-free Workplaces
by Mark A. de Bernardo
Thursday, October 14, 1999
http://www.intellectualcapital.com/issues/Issue310/item6864.asp
{{<End>}}
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