Pre-Job Drug Testing for Entertainers Urged

The drug abuse consultant for the National Football League and the Los Angeles Dodgers, saying that drug abuse in Hollywood is prevalent among stars and technicians alike, called on the entertainment industry Saturday to institute pre-employment drug testing.

Forest S. Tennant Jr., executive director of Community Health Projects Inc., recommended the testing while speaking on a panel sponsored by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences during a daylong drug abuse conference in Universal City.

After the presentation, Tennant said that he believes drug use is “very high” in the entertainment industry and often conducted in the open on film and TV sets. He based this on admissions to the six substance abuse clinics his company operates throughout the state. For every star performer entering a clinic, he said, there are a dozen other film industry employees, such as cameramen and technicians.

While the television academy event focused on the images presented on screen, Tennant said after his presentation: “You can’t have the right drug messages when the individuals producing those messages use drugs.”

“When the prevalence (of drug use) gets so high that everybody is talking about it--especially people who are role models,” testing is in order, Tennant said. He noted that many industries are now turning to pre-employment drug testing and that he was not singling out the Hollywood community.

On a subsequent panel, industry representatives uniformly disagreed with Tennant.

“We live in a free society--in another society urine testing could work quite well,” said actor Tom Selleck, star of CBS’ “Magnum, P.I.”

Barney Rosenzweig, executive producer of “Cagney & Lacey,” suggested that the networks themselves may inadvertently contribute to drug problems by waiting until May to order fall series episodes. That practice, he said, “encourages us to work people 12 hours a day.” Without that pressure, he said, substance abuse might diminish.

Tennant said that, as a result of the NFL’s annual spring drug testing program, there “has not been a single hospitalization” due to a drug-related illness or accident this year.