Drug testing is alive and well in the private sector even pushed by Obama!
As more states legalize pot entity liability /exposure/health risks/missed work time increase and so will drug testing!
Nearly 8 in 10 Employers Screen for Alcohol, Drugs
#Roy Maurer
By Roy Maurer
Employment Screening Benchmarking Report, 78 percent of respondents overall conduct drug testing on some portion of their workforce.
This number jumps dramatically in the transportation industry (98 percent), which has additional regulatory requirements.
The report is based on survey results from more than 1,600 respondents, including human resource, security and other management professionals in a wide range of industries and organization sizes. Both HireRight customers and noncustomers were surveyed.
Overall, 19 percent of respondents do not conduct drug or alcohol tests and have no plans to; 3 percent do not conduct tests but plan to do so.
Most organizations (90 percent) are screening job candidates, and 71 percent also screen current employees. Thirty-two percent screen contingent or temporary workers.
Eighty-eight percent of respondents require these tests before the first day of work, 61 percent give them upon reasonable suspicion, and 59 percent do so when investigating an accident. Eight percent conduct testing immediately after an employee’s start date, and 4 percent do so with a transfer or promotion.
Obama Administration Pushes Drug Testing in Workplace
By Arthur Delaney
National Drug Control Report released Tuesday.
But not everyone in America should have to pee in a cup, according to a spokesman for the Obama administration agency that issued the report.
“While we believe that employers can use testing as one of a variety of tools to help guide employees suffering from substance abuse disorders into treatment –- which as we announced yesterday is not a moral failing but a treatable disease -– it is certainly not our policy that every employer in America ought to test and punish employees,” Rafael Lemaitre, spokesman for the administration’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, said in an email.
The comments come amid a wave of state and federal proposals that would require the poor and unemployed to prove they’re not on drugs in order to receive government benefits. In many instances, Republican proponents of drug testing have argued that since most businesses require workers to drug test, the government should do the same for those seeking welfare or unemployment insurance while they search for work.
“For a vast majority of very large companies, or private and public sector jobs in general, drug testing is something that’s mandatory,” state Sen. Steve Smith (R-Maricopa), sponsor of a stalled drug testing bill in Arizona, told HuffPost in March. “As far as I’m concerned, if you’re on drugs, you probably won’t make the best applicant or interviewee.
Another excerpt from a government study:
According to a recent survey of 1,000 companies performed by the American Management Association,51.5% of the respondents engaged in some form of drug testing, representing a
net increase of 140% since 1987.1 In spite of the serious consequences that can flow from this increasingly widespread practice, loss of privacy, damage to reputation,unemployment, emotional distress