Workplace drug testing is widespread but ineffective

At a job a few years back I was the manager of a small field maintenance crew. We were tasked with maintaining wireless equipment (antennas on towers and commercials buildings) for about 10,000 customers. Our company had been purchased recently and the policy of the new owners was that any time anyone was in any kind of 'incident' in a company vehicle, every employee in the vehicle had to be picked up by their manager, driven to the drug testing facility, tested, and driven home to their doorstep and then couldn't return to work until the test came back, sometimes several days later.

The last winter I was there we got hit with a major snowstorm. One of our towers on the top of a mountain was having problems, causing service interruptions for about 7,000 customers. Our safety policy mandated at least two technicians at a job like this, and one of my 3 technicians was out of town. I took one of the others with me and headed for the tower, which was about 2 miles up a dirt road that was now covered in about 2 feet of snow. Right after pulling on to the road, the company truck brushed up against a fence post that I didn't see because it had fallen over and was buried in the snow. The post left a scratch in one of the body panels of the truck that would have to be repaired. There was no way I'd be able to get it repaired without being asked about the drug test.

I called my manager and he made a few calls hoping we could get an exception to the drug test rule this time around. No luck. This was right around the time of the holidays - maybe even New Years Eve, if I remember correctly. The only drug testing center open was about an hour drive from where we were, in the opposite direction of where we lived. My manager had to come pick us up, take us to the center, drive us home, then go pick up my last remaining technician, drive back to the tower, drive up to the tower (by this time it was dark), and then start troubleshooting the problem. Turned a 90 minute outage in to a 6 hour outage. Then of course it took several days for the drug tests to come back, so my manager and one remaining technician had to deal with all of the aftermath of the storm in the same way.

I'll bet this one incident offset any positive outcomes that company has seen from drug testing, if indeed there have been any.

I work in consulting in the oil and gas industry. Many E&P companies are struggling right now with crude in the $30-40/bbl range. The E&P I work for has reduced staff 4 times this year officially. Unofficially they've had 6 "random" drug tests in the past 8 months. That is a way to reduce payroll without having to do a press release stating you've dropped 26% of your workforce.

Corporate culture is intrinsically tied to risk adversity and the reason it's allowed to spiral out of control is because of costs that are difficult or impossible to measure. If you can point to a risk and a cost associated with it while the detractors speak to morale or other intangibles you're going to win out in almost any big company. Is a drug testing policy going to keep you from hiring amazing employees? Quite possibly (the particulars of your industry and geographical area apply). But how do you measure that? No one is going to say "I didn't apply/take the job because I smoke marijuana on the weekends." Big companies miss out on opportunities and innovation because they allow risk adversity to take over their culture.

More thoughts on the matter.

I have relatively high income, I come from affluent family, I have some savings, I'm kind of well-off, I have no troubles finding jobs.

This means I can quit a job over drug testing. A lot of people can't - they have mouths to feed, no savings to cover it up, not too desirable on job market.

This means I have an obligation to abruptly terminate my employment in such situation. This will make employers consider drug testing policies against losing people like me. Which makes world less bad for everyone, even people who could not just quit.

This is where middle-class privilege comes in handy to shield us all.

Also a socio-economic level of agency filter effect. At least a couple percent of test results are false positives. Combine those two and you filter out poorer applicants and lower level, lower income employees. If you need to downsize 5% you can start with drug testing everyone and even if no one uses drugs the high false positive rate will get rid of some employees, now you only have to downsize 2% or something. This also works to reduce spend on welfare type programs and unemployment.

I can confirm. From outside the USA it looks extremely weird. But, you know, we do things that are weird for you.

For me the most ironic part is that by this rules you maybe will fire a really good worker that tried drugs. Why do you want to fire a good worker that doesn't causes any trouble?

Maybe makes sense for people, for example, that uses firearms at work. But it will not make sense if it is not complemented with some kind of mental health care.

Really, I see it as really really weird. I see that the journalist also sees it that way. But on the comments looks like it is not so much.

Is it really so usual to do this? Isn't this seen as an invasion of personal privacy?

A few thoughts.

Drug testing is a great way for an employer to get rid of someone when they have no cause to fire them. For example, a friend of mine had a job throwing luggage at the airport. They had a policy that allowed them to arbitrarily drug test people, but they never did, so my friend figured smoking a little weed now and then would be OK. Then one day, he hurts his back. He goes in to fill out the forms for workman's comp, and guess what the first thing they ask him to do is? You can't fire someone for getting hurt, but you can for flunking a drug test!

Drug testing is not an effective way to determine whether someone is using drugs. I live in a self-run sober living house, specifically an Oxford House. We do random drug tests now and then, but it's really just to deter "I bet I can get away with..." thinking, and we rarely catch anyone using like that. The reason we never catch people with randoms is twofold - drug tests are stupid easy to beat (and most addicts know how), and we catch people relapsing because when addicts relapse, it's really an all or nothing thing. People will think they can smoke a joint at a concert (because their problem is booze, not weed!), but invariably they come staggering in drunk out of their mind within a week.

I believe employer drug testing is harmful and invasive[1]. What employees do on their own time is their business. If someone has a problem with drugs or alcohol that effects their work, that will become obvious and HR can either fire them or, and this is what's been done with me in the past, force them to go to treatment. This means that even though I get drug tested regularly where I live, I will straight up refuse to work for a company that drug tests any of it's employees (again [1]).

[1] There are some jobs where a person being intoxicated on the job would put lives or property at risk. In this case, drug and alcohol testing seems acceptable. Of course, with alcohol testing, one wonders why employers don't use the readily available UA's and mouth swabs to test for alcohol use in the past few days...social acceptability is a big deal.

Part of drug testing is to create another way to terminate employment.

In some situations, it is rather difficult to terminate an employment. It gives employer's another out.

Consider the following, which is adapted from Pascal's Wager:

Let's say it costs $50k to replace a bad employee, and the drug test costs $50. Then the test only has to screen out one bad employee per thousand to pay for itself. It's inconceivable that the test is less effective than that, so by definition, it pays for itself.

I suspect that similar logic -- paying an small cost to ward off an incalculable threat -- is behind a lot of irrational HR behavior.

Is it happening in states where weed is legal, too? I can't understand it.

My last workspace looked literally like these illustrations: a lot of folks smoking weed right in the office (open-air balcony), without any secrecy at all. And it's not even legal, although cops don't really care to enforce.

To drug test for a legal substance... Why would you agree to work at such a place?

Disregarding the Drug Free Workplace act.

Drug testing is a test for the risk tolerance of the employee. This forum may encourage a community of very risk tolerant people, which is evident from the other comments in the thread, but the level of risk tolerance that a person must have to actively use illegal drugs is a pretty strong statement of that persons risk decisions. Anyone's individual opinion on the legality of drugs is irrelevant in this situation, as the judgement call is based on the risk and reward decision regarding something that can cost someone that is caught and prosecuted thousands of dollars, jail time, and a record for something entertainment related. Obvious exceptions for this would be legalized states and medical use.

So if you consider what jobs have high cost outcomes for risky behavior, it will probably align pretty closely with high drug test rates. Some of those would be food service, industrial, transportation, medical, and construction which makes up around 30% of the workforce, and the other 20% is probably covered by governments both state and federal along with their contractors.

> As was the case 30 years ago, testing has no solid base of evidence, no proof that it succeeds. We don’t know if screening workers for recent drug use makes them more productive, lowers their risk of getting into accidents, or otherwise helps maintain the social order.

I've never heard anyone suggest that is does. The reasons in favor of drug testing I've always heard is that you don't end up hiring people who are so incompetent as to be doing drugs while applying for new jobs. It's just one more piece of signalling.

I was drug-tested when I accepted employment at my current job. I had 3 or 4 days to make it in. Even if I was the type of person to regularly consume illegal drugs, I certainly would not have done so while applying for work.

I don't think it does much good, it's probably a waste of money, and I don't care what my coworkers smoke as long they're not doing it at work, but I also don't see how anyone can be incredulous or indignant about it.