Agency Stops Hiring After Drug Tests Are Barred

The U.S. Customs Service said Friday it is instituting a hiring freeze for 3,000 positions involving narcotics interdiction because a federal judge overturned the agency’s employee drug-testing program.

Customs Commissioner William von Raab said in a statement filed in U.S. District Court in New Orleans that the hiring, part of the Reagan Administration’s and Congress’ stepped-up war on drugs, “cannot go forward at this time without drug screening.”

He said the agency wants to test incoming agents in sensitive positions for drug use to protect the integrity of the Customs Service’s drug interdiction efforts.

Von Raab’s decision came as the Justice Department announced it was appealing a Nov. 12 decision by U.S. District Judge Robert F. Collins declaring that the agency’s drug-testing program violated constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

Unionist Outraged

Robert Tobias, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which filed the lawsuit leading to the court ruling, called Von Raab’s decision “outrageous” and said it attempted “to blackmail the court by requiring customs employees to surrender their constitutional rights as ransom.”

“Von Raab agrees that there is not now nor has there ever been a drug problem among customs workers,” said Tobias, whose union represents 120,000 federal employees, including thousands at the Customs Service.

The Customs Service has been planning to fill 1,000 new positions recently created by Congress to increase drug enforcement efforts.

An additional 1,450 vacant positions require drug screening, Von Raab said, and several hundred additional vacancies are expected over the next few months due to normal attrition.