Executive Summary: Drug Testing In The Workplace

Drug Testing In The Workplace

Drug Testing in the workplace can seem impersonal and invasive towards employees but it is a process that is done when an employer has reasonable suspicion that employees are using drugs at work coming from a variety of sources such as tips, accidents or behavioral problems, actual observation of drug use, and symptoms of drug usage. Today businesses feel that they have to be well aware that their workplace is a drug free place and that their employees are stable and productive and in doing so, employers result to drug testing. Many feel that drug testing is a good tool to use to have an ideal workplace culture and that most would feel like they have nothing to hide so why object? But not everyone feels
At the time that President Reagan was present in 1986, he first began to push companies to drug test employees as well as schools and those who wish to apply for benefits as part of a rising battle on drugs. Ever since then, drug testing has become a common occurrence to the rest of the society. For many businesses drug testing has been a common tool for hiring employees and the tests come in different forms. Tests have different variety from urine based to hair based analysis test and each test does have their strengths and their weaknesses. The simplest and cheapest to use is the urine test. The easiest and most basic is called the EMIT test and it stands for enzyme multiplied immunoassay technique and involves a urine sample from the subject. The test searches for particular enzymes that produce in the body when drugs are consumed too bad for the tester this test can easily be tampered with. A more difficult and costly test is called the RIA test and it stands for radioimmunoassay and it uses the same process as the EMIT test, the difference is that this test uses a radioactive iodine as the detection method instead of an enzyme (EROWID, 2007). Drug metabolite levels are inversely proportional to the level of radioactive particles that are present. This test is much reliable and much harder for someone to tamper with. A hair test just requires just a hair
Once certain behavior in the workplace becomes common such as absenteeism, lost productivity, theft, accidents, violence, and higher benefits cost are all signs that trigger organizations to perform drug testing to their employers. There are studies conducted by the National Drug Free workplace alliance has shown a significant study on employee and drug relation, for example employees that intake drugs are 3.8 to 8.3 times more likely to be absent from work than those that do not consume drugs. On a higher rating scale of absenteeism, employees who do engage in drug use are normative that they miss an average of five days a month. It was also found in the same study that when employees that do engage in drug use are 33 percent less productive than their sober counter parts which can cost the business up to an average of $7,000 a year. It isn’t just only productivity among employees that can affect the business but also it is more likely for employees that are under the influence to be involved in accidents during work hours potentially threatening the company for worker’s compensation. Unfortunately other issues come about when employees are involved in drugs, they engage into delinquent behavior and tend to be the cause of theft within the company, and about 80% of abusers steal from their workplaces and