Caution on Drug Testing

The Orange County Board of Supervisors, following the conservative approach urged by a board-appointed task force, decided last Tuesday not to rush into drug and alcohol testing for the county’s 12,000 employees. It was a prudent decision.

There is no denying that drug and alcohol abuse is a problem employers must face, for everyone’s benefit. But testing can be a mine field of legal and practical problems that must be carefully considered before any plan is adopted. The county task force, after studying the problem for six months, raised as many questions as it did answers. It wisely urged caution in adopting a testing policy.

One problem is a dearth of case law on drug testing. Another is Sacramento’s failure to date to legislate acceptable legal guidelines for testing while preserving individual constitutional rights.

The county will continue to study the issue, and the board has authorized a “blind” testing program using job applicants who volunteer to be tested.These tests will not use names, and applicants who decline the test will have an equal chance at landing a job. The purpose is to gather information to help determine how many new county employees use drugs.

In the meantime, much still can be done to combat substance abuse by county employees. The supervisors should provide not only counseling for county workers, but an aggressive employee education program like those that have been developed by many leading businesses.

It has been estimated that 160,000 county residents are chemically dependent. Some of them no doubt are county employees. One estimate last year set the annual cost of chemical dependency for a hypothetical company with 1,000 employees at $500,000. And that didn’t include the cost in broken families and lives.

Testing may help detect drug and alcohol use. Even more important is an educational effort to stop substance abuse before it starts.