TED HUNTER : Grappling With Drugs at Work : Ex-DEA Official Advises Employers on Setting Up a Plan

As the “war on drugs” heats up, businesses are finding themselves caught in the cross fire.

Clearly, drug and alcohol abuse in the workplace is bad for business, and some employers also feel an obligation to help solve a national problem.

But these concerns must be balanced against legitimate employee objections to company policies that infringe on the right to privacy.

Fighting drugs in the workplace can be an expensive drain on both monetary and managerial resources. For most companies, the question is not whether to have a drug and alcohol policy, but what kind of policy to have.

Because substance abuse presents a new--and exceptionally challenging--business problem, most managers are poorly equipped to develop a policy .

For Ted Hunter, however, the drug problem is not new. As Western regional director for the Drug Enforcement Administration, Hunter was on the front lines of the government’s war on drugs until his retirement in 1987.

Today, as president of Situation Management Inc., a Tustin-based consulting firm that helps client companies develop and implement anti-drug strategies, Hunter is using his expertise to help the private sector do its part.

In a recent interview with Times staff writer Jonathan Weber, Hunter discussed the issues raised by drugs in the workplace, and outlined the steps a company should take in developing a drug strategy.

Q. As a former law enforcement official, do you think there is too much emphasis on law enforcement in the fight against drugs?

A. On balance, yes. There is an expectation in the average citizen’s mind that this is a problem that can be dealt with by government interdiction. I’m satisfied that law enforcement is doing its job, but the war on drugs is more than enforcement, more than government action. And government is not just police and military, it’s also prevention, research, education and training, and in that sense government can do more and should do more.

Q. If people shouldn’t look to government, who should they look to?

A. We should look to ourselves, as employers, as employees, as parents, as community members. We should all be a bit more responsible, to know and understand that drug abuse is not in our best interest, that it has real costs to our health and to our welfare.

Q. Beyond the notion of taking the problem seriously, what should people do in their capacity as employers to combat the problem?

A. First, companies must realize the economic and liability issues raised by drug abuse. Drugs in the workplace are bad business, and employers are well-advised to implement a drug-prevention program consistent with their needs, their philosophy, and the manner in which they relate to their employees. The program must be legally sound, well thought out, and right for that organization.

Q. You say drugs are bad for business. Do you have any figures to show how bad?

A. The figure most often used is $110 billion a year in lost productivity from alcohol and controlled substances. The costs include higher absenteeism, more workers compensation claims, higher health benefit premiums, among other costs.

Q. In addition to those direct costs, you also mentioned liability risks. How does the liability issue arise?

A. Liability comes in any number of areas, and employers often learn through a tragic example. Liability for third-party injuries, negligent supervision and wrongful terminations can add up to sizable amounts of money. Much of that can be alleviated when employers are better informed and they have a policy where everyone understands his responsibilities. Supervisors have to know, for instance, not to send an employee home if they recognize him to be impaired. Supposing halfway home he has an accident, and there’s property damage and personal injury: once it is established that the employer was a party to that, they are open to liability.

Firing someone for being drug dependent can raise issues of wrongful termination. And if an employee is recognized to have a drug problem and it’s well-known to fellow employees, and no action is taken, and that worker injures a third party on the job, that raises an issue of supervisory liability. The courts will say: Have you done anything? All employers are required to have a safe and secure workplace, and this is often defined in terms of reasonableness and good-faith efforts.

Q. You seem to hold that there are several possible approaches to developing a drug strategy for the workplace.

A. Yes. It depends first of all on what the company does. Are they in manufacturing or service? And here we start to get into the most controversial area: drug testing. That’s a choice, an option that an employer has, but it has to be justified. And the justification is often driven by what kind of work is involved. Are there public safety issues? When these things are litigated, the arbitrator or court will ask: Why are you drug testing? Can you justify that as a reasonable action? In manufacturing, where there are issues of safety, you can justify testing better than in a service organization.

Q. Can you discuss the testing dilemma in more detail?

A. There are levels of drug testing, with four kinds of applications: pre-employment testing, reasonable suspicion testing, random testing and follow-up testing for those who have an identified problem. So an employer must decide first and foremost, is he going to drug test, and, if so, in what form.

But drug testing is not a policy or a program. It is a component of a program.

Q. Don’t some of these forms of testing, especially random testing, entail a legal risk for employers?

A. All of these are in a great deal of flux and confusion, at least in California. Arbitrators and courts will rule differently, and each case rises and falls on its own merits as to whether it can be justified. The best justification for random testing is certainly national security and law enforcement, but it’s a pretty tough proposition for the average private sector employer.

Q. How about some of the other forms of testing?

A. Pre-employment testing is the least controversial, the easiest to justify and met with the least opposition by employees. Even union shops don’t have a problem with pre-employment, because you’re not a member of the union until you come to work. A significant number of employers are implementing pre-employment testing.

Q. There’s a case now in California where pre-employment drug screening is being challenged. Can an employer implement a pre-employment testing program without worrying about being sued over it?

A. You can be sued over anything, but it seems the basis of that litigation is the California constitutional provision protecting the right to privacy. I’m not sure they would find the same basis in many other states, and it’s still being litigated.

Q. But in giving advice to employers, would you tell them “don’t worry about it?”

A. With any level of testing, I always ask: Why are you testing? What’s your expectation? What are you going to do when you find positives? In establishing conditions of employment, companies have a great deal of latitude, but they have to think these things out.

There has to be a procedure for drug testing. There is a rather high expectation that when you test, you should have something to balance it out in the way of a referral program, an employee assistance program to help that individual when they are found to be positive.

Q. Under what circumstances would you support pre-employment testing?

A. That’s probably valid for everyone who is drawing employees from the surrounding community.

Q. And for reasonable suspicion testing?

A. There have to be issues of safety. The majority of companies that have reasonable suspicion testing are in manufacturing. I can support reasonable suspicion for a company that has heavy machinery, forklifts, work that is prone to accidents.

Q. Do you recommend that all employers implement some kind of testing?

A. We made a conscious decision not to recommend that an employer test or not test. We say: “These are your choices, these are your options,” but employers really must make the decision themselves.

There is good news and bad news with drug testing: it’s there, and it’s an option, but there’s an over-emphasis on it. Testing is overplayed, overemphasized, and there are other choices.

Q. What are the other options?

A. You have to build a complete program. It starts with a policy statement. If you’re going to drug test, that should be spelled out, and everyone should know you are testing. What are you going to do in terms of a reasonable assistance program? There should be a provision for communicating the policy to employees. Is the employer going to conduct a search? If they’re going to do that, that should be spelled out so there will not be an expectation of privacy.

The policy becomes a framework for what the company is going to do. Will law enforcement be called in if something is identified? It’s really a question of defining the responsibilities of all employees, driven by the need to have a safe and secure workplace.

Q. What other components might be a part of a complete program?

A. Employees have to be educated and supervisors have to be trained. There are a tremendous number of misconceptions and falsehoods around this thing. A CEO will say, “I want to train my people, I want law enforcement to come and show them what drugs look like, and that will constitute training.” That’s absurd. To have law enforcement come in and put drugs on the table and tell some war stories, that’s very interesting, but to suggest that’s training and education is terribly ill thought out.

Q. So what should a manager be trained to do?

A. Fulfill their responsibilities to hold employees accountable for their job and their performance on the job. In most organizations, a valid program is one of prevention and deterrence and holding people accountable in terms of performance. Supervisors are the best equipped, through the development of skills, to hold people accountable for the job.

Q. So drug and alcohol prevention--through performance monitoring--is not that different from other, more generic managerial functions?

A. Absolutely correct. What’s often lost sight of is that it’s just as appropriate for alcohol and drugs as for anything else. And employers must learn their proper responsibility is effective performance management.

But there is another aspect of this: Where there are drugs being bought and sold--and in come cases manufactured--in the workplace, there is an issue of crisis management. Employers must develop skills to deal with that.

Q. What kinds of things should managers be looking out for in monitoring for drug use?

A. There are signs and symptoms that may or may not be attributable to drug use. Is an employee having an attendance problem? Are they conducting themselves properly? Drug abuse in the workplace causes an individual’s conduct and behavior to change in a particular way.

Managers have to be sensitive to that and confront the employee in a responsible, positive and caring fashion. They shouldn’t accuse the employee of anything, but rather say, “I have noticed that you have been late every Friday for the last three weeks,” or, “I have noticed that for the last month when we hold a meeting you’re argumentative or disruptive, and you never used to be that way. Is there a problem?”

The whole idea is making better supervisors through performance management techniques. When we go into companies, the light suddenly goes on that this is not terribly new. What we’re telling them is: Don’t be frightened by the employee you think is using drugs, but exercise your basic responsibilities. Don’t accuse employees of being on drugs, but confront them with facts.

A fascinating reality is that all substance abusers firmly believe they have it under control and no one else notices. The earlier a supervisor brings to their attention performance deficiencies, the sooner that employee has to deal with the problem, and the more likely it is that there can be successful treatment.

Q. Who should provide the treatment?

A. There is a rising concern today over health costs, and I fear that the substance abuse problem is going to suffer in that process. Employers should do as much as they do for any other kind of handicap or ailment, but where the individual continues to suffer drug addiction or dependency, it is not the employer’s responsibility to carry that individual.

Employers often think that if employees are involved in drugs, then an employee assistance program and treatment is the immediate response. But an awful lot of people don’t have a problem of such magnitude that treatment is appropriate.

Q. What are the other elements of education and training?

A. It’s important to educate all workers about the impact of drug and alcohol abuse. It costs everyone, in terms of accidents, image of the company, and resources dedicated to dealing with the problem which might have gone into expansion, new products, new services. Drug use is not a cheap proposition, and non-users are paying for it.

Q. Where in a company do drug problems tend to be found?

A. Sometimes there is a perception that policy is being written for non-managerial people, that all the drug problems are in the warehouse or out on the loading lock. In fact, drug abuse is at all levels of employment. Cocaine is a central nervous system stimulant, and it’s very attractive to executives. It provides this feeling of increased energy and increased capacity, and many executives fall prey to that trap.

Q. But can’t cocaine and other stimulants in fact improve performance, make people work better?

A. That’s a paradox: You’re trying to manage and monitor the problem on the basis of performance, but for a while, stimulant use might actually improve performance.

But it depends on what we mean by work better. Increased energy and increased time at work, yes. But we’ve got to examine the details. Let’s look to the work, not just the behavior. I’ve worked with two to three companies that have promoted people based on the performance that was stimulated by cocaine abuse. They didn’t realize that while the person had increased capacity, the work itself was not that great.

Q. Is there anything special about the drug problem in Orange County that local companies should be aware of?

A. Orange County’s problems are pretty much the nation’s problems. Los Angeles and Orange counties have particular significance as major transshipment points. Drugs are readily available here, so the impact on employers is probably a bit greater than elsewhere.