Public Safety and Drug Testing

The Times editorial “A Court Is Off the Track” (Feb. 17) called for the U.S. Supreme Court to settle the rules for drug testing those whose work directly affects public health and safety. I strongly agree.

Your editorial makes an excellent argument for overturning a recent decision by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit that prevents post-accident drug testing of train crews.

I would ask the U.S. Supreme Court to go an important step further by authorizing mandatory random drug testing of those whose work directly affects public health and safety, including police officers and others who provide emergency services.

In my view, it is constitutionally reasonable to assure that those who hold the lives of others in their hands are drug-free before they drive a train, fly a plane or respond to an emergency. Knowing that they are randomly subject to a minimally intrusive test would go a long way toward providing such assurance.

Unfortunately, the procedure desired by the appeals court of allowing drug testing only when there is a “particularized suspicion” of drug use, triggered by some change in the employee’s behavior that has been observed by qualified supervisors, is inherently unreliable. That rationale erroneously presumes that supervisors in the many varied occupations that directly affect public safety are drug recognition experts.

A testing program designed to discourage, as well as detect, drug abuse offers far better protection of the public’s health and safety than post-accident testing that is conducted only after the public has been seriously harmed.

DARYL F. GATES

Chief of Police

Los Angeles