CAP CITIES/ABC TO START DRUG TESTING IN AUGUST

Beginning in August, Capital Cities/ABC plans to require urine tests of prospective full-time employees to determine if they are “drug abusers,” a company memo says.

The testing program will start initially with candidates for jobs at the company’s eight TV and 21 radio stations, and later will be put into effect at other divisions of the company, which employs about 19,000 people.

Those failing the test will be considered “unsuitable for employment by any unit of the company” for six months, said the memo, signed by Thomas S. Murphy and Daniel B. Burke, the company’s chairman and president, respectively. It was sent to employees Thursday.

The plan, which exempts from testing those already employed by the company, makes Cap Cities/ABC the first of the major broadcast networks to require such drug tests as a condition for full-time employment.

Neither NBC nor CBS require it of job candidates, but each has extensive drug counseling and rehabilitation programs for employees, officials for the two broadcasting companies said.

A Cap Cities/ABC spokeswoman said the company’s new testing requirement is another step stemming from concern about what the memo called “unfortunate incidents involving drug use on company property.”

Although she did not elaborate on the nature of those incidents, the spokeswoman, Patty Matson, said they had occurred in 1984 at publishing operations owned by Capital Cities in 1984, two years before the company acquired ABC.

(In early 1986, apparently responding to reports of drug abuse at its newspapers and TV stations, Capital Cities announced a tough new anti-drug policy. Among other things, it said it would send drug-sniffing dogs into the offices of the Kansas City Star, which it owns, but later called off that plan after employee protests.)

Cap Cities/ABC already has a company-wide drug counseling and rehabilitation program, Matson said, including a telephone hot line for employees to call for advice if they or their families have problems with drugs.

To date, the company’s memo said, “400 employees and their families have entered rehabilitation programs.”