Want to Work for San Diego? Test for Drugs Might Be Required

In an effort to halt on-the-job drug abuse, San Diego’s personnel director is planning to test all prospective city employees to see if they are using illegal drugs.

Personnel Director Rich Snapper has also quietly instituted strict new procedures that allow employees who are suspected of on-the-job drug use to be referred immediately for testing.

If they refuse, they can be disciplined--even fired. And if the test is positive, they also can be fired, Snapper said.

Although the new drug screening program was recently written into the city’s contract with Industrial Medical Center, Snapper has not yet publicized the crackdown on drugs.

Most supervisors do not yet know that they have the authority to refer an employee who appears to be “under the influence” for immediate testing.

Some of those who do know of the plans suggest that Snapper has been “hiding” them for fear that employees will react strongly against them.

Leaders of city employee groups --who learned about the anti-drug campaign from a reporter--said they were surprised by the proposal to test all potential employees but would reserve judgment until they knew more about it.

“Everybody wants to make sure the city employees clean up their act if they are involved in drugs,” said Richard Hamilton, president of the Municipal Employees Assn., which represents 2,500 of the city’s 7,000 workers. “The concept sounds OK, but I don’t know how he intends to implement it.”

Ron Satoff, president of San Diego Fire Fighters Local 145, said he wasn’t told of the drug testing plan and that he “would have to see the program” to judge its merits.

In an interview this week, Snapper said he would soon explain the campaign in detail. The new referral procedure for employees who appear intoxicated is already in effect, but Snapper said he needs Civil Service Commission approval before he can begin testing prospective city employees. Snapper said he plans to bring up the issue at the commission’s June 6 meeting and seek approval at its July 11 meeting.

Once the commission agrees, drug screens on applicants for city jobs would begin immediately, Snapper said.

Snapper said that because the tests are not cheap--a marijuana screening is $15, and a broader test to pick up amphetamines, PCP, barbiturates, cocaine and/or other illegal drugs costs $30--he would start with a sample of about 50 to 100 prospective firefighters, police officers and equipment operators.

If that screening proves effective, screening of all prospective city employees would start 60 to 90 days after the pilot tests began, Snapper said.

Snapper said he had no statistics on how many city employees were abusing drugs, but he conceded that the number is not large. “The incidents are limited in number,” Snapper said. “But when one occurs, it can be severe in nature.”

He mentioned several recent problems. In one case, a city gardener began “acting weird” and was arrested at his park site on suspicion of being under the influence of drugs. In another, a parks department supervisor was fired after he was discovered smoking marijuana. In a third, a city truck driver--”uncooperative, belligerent and stoned out of his mind”--showed up for work and demanded that he be allowed to drive his truck.

Snapper emphasized that if a supervisor orders an employee to be tested for drugs, the supervisor must have good reason to believe that the person has been using illegal drugs at work. Suspicions about drug use at home are not sufficient, Snapper said. And he promised that the city will not undertake random drug screenings.

“We are not going to go around surprising employees like the Navy did--’OK, now, a dozen of you report for tests,’ ” Snapper said. “We don’t want to ever get in the situation where we are routinely running the troops in for testing.”

As part of planning for the screenings, Snapper asked the city attorney’s office whether such tests, including routinely testing an entire division of workers, were legal.

In a five-page opinion, Deputy City Atty. John M. Kaheny wrote that city employees suspected of “on-duty intoxication” could be required to take blood and urine tests without any violation of their rights. Also, Kaheny said, all applicants for city jobs could be required to submit to drug tests.

But, he warned, “screening of all (current) city employees or conducting a random screening of city employees for drug usage is not possible except under extreme circumstances.”

Snapper said that before any testing begins, he must define more precisely the scope of the pilot testing and what drugs the tests will sample.

He also must satisfy the concerns of Jim McFarland, chairman of the Civil Service Commission, who worried about the possibility of “false-positive” tests, such as positive signs for illegal drug use when an employee has instead taken a prescription drug.

“You get into a lot of employee rights,” McFarland said. “But management would be irresponsible if they didn’t take some steps to control” illegal drug use.

San Diego is not alone in its concern about drug use at work. In a pilot program, the City of Los Angeles has been testing prospective police officers for drugs for the last six months. Of the 300 candidates tested, the city found only five or six that tested positive, Los Angeles Personnel Director John Driscoll said. But the city will probably continue using the test, he said. “It’s worth it,” he said, because the city doesn’t want police officers using drugs.

Still, Driscoll said, Los Angeles is not likely to apply the test to other city employees. “The employer has a right to invade somebody’s privacy if it can be sufficiently shown it’s a job-related reason,” he noted, and testing police, firefighters, or even equipment operators is not unreasonable.

But “we’re careful, we’re very careful how we handle this thing,” Driscoll said. “There’s a lot of potential for false-positives, and we are messing with people’s lives. We validate this thing. (If the test is positive) we go back and interview the candidate.”

But “you have to be very careful what occupation you choose (to test),” Driscoll said. “I don’t see us trying to drug test 50,000 city employees--every clerk typist who walks through the door.”