Drug Testing Safeguards Needed

Shamefully, the use of illicit drugs in this country supports a multibillion-dollar criminal empire ruled by drug lords, and that generally accepted fact is bad enough.

But the Bush Administration, in its zeal to attack the problem, has repeatedly exaggerated and misused statistics about drug use in the workplace and its financial impact.

The hype is leading to a major increase in testing that is not highly reliable. That can cause serious problems for workers, who can be fired, or not hired, because tests erroneously indicate that they use drugs. Also, testing is expensive for employers who pay for it and who can face costly legal action by workers falsely accused of taking drugs.

There are ways that testing can be used to combat the problem, but not nearly enough is being done to safeguard workers who are tested.

The rush to test workers stems in part from badly flawed studies that were used to provide President Bush and federal drug czar William J. Bennett with the widely disseminated statistic that drug abuse costs American industry at least $60 billion a year.

John Horgan, an editor of the authoritative publication, Scientific American, ridicules the basic study used to get the estimate, saying it was statistically illogical.

The study surveyed 3,700 households in 1982, asking if any member at any time had used marijuana daily for at least 20 days in any 30-day period. Households with a heavy marijuana user earned 28% less than families with no heavy users.

Then came the big jump to the conclusion that the income difference was caused solely by the families’ “reduced productivity due to daily marijuana use” at some time by at least one family member.

Horgan noted that the difference could have been caused by many other factors, such as family size. The more family members, the greater the odds that one may have used marijuana, and large families often have low incomes.

Besides, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which developed the figure, acknowledges that it really only showed the potential loss of income to families with a drug-using member, not a real loss to American industry.

Nevertheless, to dramatize the extent of the problem, the Administration extrapolated the family sample to get a national figure and proclaimed that workplace drug use was costing all of American industry $27 billion.

Then that figure was inflated by adding estimated costs of drug-related crimes and inflation and population growth since 1982. Up came the frightening estimate that workplace drugs today cost American companies $60 billion a year. Bush at times rounds the figure off to a neat $100 billion.

Strangely, the same 1982 survey included a question about current drug use. The answer, mostly ignored, showed no significant difference between the incomes of households with current users of marijuana, cocaine or heroin and incomes of households that had no users.

Despite the Administration’s politically potent scare tactics to increase drug testing, we cannot act as though there is no real drug problem. There is.

Trouble comes in the slapdash way that many worried companies try to cope with the problem. Finally, however, some--but not enough--curbs are being applied on the rush to testing.

The conservative California Supreme Court recently let stand lower court rulings that, under California’s constitutionally protected right of privacy, employers cannot fire or otherwise punish workers who refuse to submit to random drug tests.

We should hope that other states will follow California’s lead, as they often do.

As important as the court ruling was, it still allows companies to continue giving drug tests to job applicants and those in safety-related jobs. And that leaves a large number of workers vulnerable to rejection or dismissal because of false test results.

Also, workers can be labeled drug users if they take a legally prescribed medicine--or even a poppy-seed bagel--that can produce the same test result as an illegal substance.

Few employers bother or can afford to offer a second test to check for mistakes, although responsible companies avoid those pitfalls by offering repeat tests and using only certified, reliable testing companies.

Eric Greenberg at American Management Assn. says 51.5% of all medium-sized and large companies already do some kind of testing, and that means that it is more urgent than ever for Congress to enact strict safeguards to protect workers from abuse by testing.

Limited, non-random testing can assist the war on drugs. But it must be done with great care, and government-mandated counseling and drug rehabilitation must be offered, with the help of federal funds.

One system that seems sensible, especially for dangerous occupations, was negotiated recently by four building trades unions representing 100,000 workers and four Southern California construction associations. It provides fairly strong safeguards for workers’ rights.

Under the agreement, no random testing is allowed, and tests can be required only for “reasonable cause” based on evidence of suspicious on-the-job behavior observed by a supervisor and a worker or union representative.

Workers who test positive must be given a second test and, if they still contend that there has been a mistake, they can appeal through the industry-union grievance procedure.

Those who must take the test get it at a facility agreed on by the company and union. Those who pass, including job applicants, must be paid for any lost time.

Current employees who fail the test can go through a rehabilitation program; if they complete it successfully, they are rehired.

Controlled testing is often approved of by workers who can be endangered by drug users. Douglas McCarron, head of the carpenters district council, who helped negotiate the construction industry testing system for this area, says his members overwhelmingly voted for it.

That system, and probably no other, is going to eliminate drug use in the workplace. But then the problem isn’t nearly as horrendous as the Bush Administration contends.