By employment standards of several decades ago, it would probably seem a tremendous invasion of personal privacy: the idea of an employer requiring job applicants to provide samples of their bodily fluids in order to prove they don’t use illegal drugs.
But as Business Report details in a feature from the current issue, in many occupations today, a drug test is just another step along the road to getting a job. In some cases, even persons shown to be “clean” in an initial test may face random drug screenings over the course of years of employment.
Drug testing has become a fact of working life for many people in a society that has felt the pain of substance abuse and in an economy that has paid dearly for its costs. Of an estimated 14.8 million Americans who use illegal drugs, 70% are employed, according to the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence. The organization estimates that nearly 15 million persons employed on a full-time basis in the United States are heavy alcohol drinkers.
Meanwhile, workers also are increasingly abusing medications prescribed by physicians. Prescription drugs are the third most commonly abused substance category, behind alcohol and marijuana and ahead of cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine, according to the NCADD.
In the workplace, the costs of drug abuse—which include reduced productivity, poor work quality and needless risk taking—carry an estimated financial toll above $80 billion a year.
“Drug use has moved from the street into places of employment,” says Chad Murray, president of the Acadiana chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management. He says substance abuse testing has increased in line with the trend.
In areas such as south Louisiana that are home to heavy industry and oilfield services, which tend to carry a higher safety risk for both workers and to some extent the people who live nearby, drug testing has become a sizable business, with testing sites springing up throughout the region.
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