Thanks but no thanks.
One of the companies my father owned, he one day went to see something at the police station, and saw open book of wanted criminals, and found half of his employees there, and all of them were in the same criminal group, while inside the company they behaved like if they did not knew each other until they met at the workplace...
But probably I would refuse to take a drug test too. But sometimes companies are between a rock and a hard place.
In a functional working environment, if someone shows up incapacitated, you would show him the door there and then. But in the dysfunctional environment that we are in, if someone shows up incapacitated and kills someone, the company can point to the drug test, claim that they have taken due care when hiring and are off the hook. This needs to stop.
Right, that's exactly the point, you don't need drug tests to find nonfunctional addicts.
I'm pretty far OT here WRT drug testing, but anyway a good HR department should be more than a cover-your-ass paperwork machine.
My father distanced himself a bit from management at the time, since he is the tech guy (he invented all the machines that the factory manufactured), and management was happy to hire locals, so many employees were hired off the street (ie: random unemployed people that reached the door and asked to do blue collar job)
Drug tests are counterproductive, because not only do they not dissuade drug use (empirically), but they push drug users towards drugs like cocaine, which are detectable in drug tests for only two days, instead of drugs like marijuana, which are detectable for several weeks.
The only drug you can really test for effectively is marijuana, and I frankly couldn't care less whether an employee uses marijuana - medicinal or recreational - in his free time, just the same way I don't care whether he drinks alcohol or smokes cigarettes.
Finally, it's nobody's business what an employee of mine chooses to do after work so long as it doesn't impact his work performance. If it does, that's reason enough to fire him right then and there, without any need for a drug test.
I'm also impressed by your assertion that employees will think, "Shit, I can't smoke weed, guess I better start doing coke!" It's like the whole "gateway drugs" thing, except he skips straight to the hard stuff because the gateway isn't available to him.
In my personal experiences, I'd have to agree with Steve and I personally would rather hire someone who has taken LSD vs someone who hasn't. To me it doesn't show irresponsibility- it shows a sense of exploration and creativity.
Exploration? perhaps, but boredom and peer pressure are more likely explanations.