Report Finds Less Drug Use Among U.S. Workers, and Some Regional Surprises

Fewer American workers are testing positive for illicit drugs, and those who are have turned more to marijuana and less to cocaine, according to an industry report released Tuesday.

And in a finding that surprised even some who ran the study, the three regions with the highest positive rates were not metropolitan areas.

Southwestern Tennessee, western Indiana and northwestern Florida were the three regions with the highest percentage of workers on drugs, with 8% to 14% of tests coming back positive, the SmithKline Beecham study showed.

That compares with 4% to 6% of those tested in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, and with 2% to 4% in Miami.

“I would’ve expected the large metropolitan areas around New York, around Philadelphia, around Miami, around Los Angeles to show a high percentage of positives,” said Tom Johnson, spokesman for the British drug and laboratory testing company.

SmithKline Beecham based its results on the nearly 5 million workplace drug tests the company performed for U.S. employers last year. With 20% of the market, SmithKline is the nation’s largest drug tester.

Overall, about 5% of workers tested positive for illegal substances in 1997, down from 5.8% in 1996, according to the study. The rate of positive tests has declined or remained the same each year since 1987, when it was 18.1%.

Among workers found to have taken drugs, more were staying away from the hard stuff, Johnson said.

“We’re doing more testing but finding that the rate continues to decline,” he said. “Marijuana continues to be the drug of choice.”

Tests detected marijuana in 60% of those who tested positive last year, up from 54% in 1996. Cocaine use, however, declined from nearly 23% of those testing positive last year to less than 17% in 1996, the study found.

Workers in jobs SmithKline classifies as “safety-sensitive” tested positive less often, at 3.5% of all those tested. That compares with 5.2% among those in the general work force.

When employers tested workers “for cause,” meaning they believed there was reason to suspect drug use, more than one in four workers tested positive.

The rise of workplace drug testing has spawned a cottage industry in trying to beat the tests. Richard Haddad, whose Health Tech company in Georgia gets 500 calls a day from people asking about herbal detoxification teas, urine sample additives and other products, calls the business a “multimillion-dollar industry.”

Despite the rise of the test-beating industry, workplace drug testing appears to be more popular among employers. Last month the Supreme Court allowed random drug tests for some people with access to the White House complex, despite arguments that government is trampling privacy rights in pursuit of a drug-free work force.