Workplace Drug Testing and Worker Drug Use

Drug testing in the workplace.

Congress passed the Drug-Free Workplace Act in April 1988, which resulted in the Mandatory Guidelines for Federal Workplace Drug Testing Programs. The intent was to establish a substance-free work environment for all federal workers by requiring that all federal employees pass a urine drug test before employment. These guidelines specifically, and exclusively, focus on testing urine specimens f...

Workplace Drug Testing: Evidence and issues

To test or not to test: do workplace drug testing programs discourage employee drug use?

Workplace drug testing programs are often met with intense criticism. Despite resistance among labor and consumer groups and a lack of rigorous empirical evidence regarding effectiveness, drug testing programs have remained popular with employers throughout the 1990s and into the current century. The present study analyzed nationally representative data on over 15,000 US households to determine...

Alternative specimens for workplace drug testing.

Recent advances in analytical techniques have enabled the detection of drugs and drug metabolites in alternative biological specimens for the purposes of workplace testing. A wide variety of specimens are available, each providing valuable information concerning prior or current drug use. The present focus is on oral fluid (saliva), hair, and sweat. An extensive evaluation by the Division of Wo...

Prevalence of drug testing in the workplace

Tyler D. Hartwell, Paul D. Steele, Michael T. French, Nathaniel F. Rodman Substance abuse has compelled many U.S. firms to create strategies that would help keep it out of the workplace. Some firms have sponsored elaborate and extensive programs to control alcohol and drug misuse. However, these programs have tended to rely on a supervisor’s, a coworker’s, or an employee’s judgment about the pr...